But she wasn’t.
* * *
‘It’s not that I don’t love New Zealand, or my parents, or even the farm,’ Liam said. He was sitting on the floor, his back against one of the armchairs, one leg bent at the knee, one elbow resting on it as he stared at the flames dancing in the wood burner. ‘But I’m not sure I’m ready to be a farmer for the rest of my life. Our place – it’s big, and it’s remote. There won’t be much “popping to the pub for a quick half” once I’m back there.’
‘Is it North or South Island?’
‘South, in Central Otago.’
‘I bet it’s beautiful.’
‘It is. Have you been?’
‘Yes,’ Anna said. ‘Only the South Island, but I loved it. We went mainly for wine country – my ex was filming part of a series there. I remember thinking I’d happily live there permanently if it weren’t so far away. My dad was alive then, but it would have been too far for him to visit.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yeah. People say that a lot.’
‘So this trip around Europe is a last bout of freedom before settling down?’
He grinned. ‘Something like that. It was my mum’s idea, actually. She wanted me to see the world. I think she was worried that if I didn’t, I’d regret it later on.’
Anna smiled. ‘You ended up in a pretty tiny corner of it.’
‘I know,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t even know why I came back for this season. I could have stayed on the Continent. The fishing suits me, I guess. I’m better at being outside. And there are good people here.’
‘There are,’ she agreed.
‘Good cooks, too.’
‘Oh yes, I can break eggs with the best of them.’ She poured him more wine.
Liam sighed and leaned back against the chair. ‘I always loved this place from the outside. I’m so glad it’s as cute inside, too.’
They were quiet for a few moments. Anna watched his face, at the way his eyes studied the bookcases in the ceiling, the colourful spines of her many cookbooks. He had surprised her by being better – and quieter – company than she’d anticipated. She’d expected him to be fun – and he was, he’d made her laugh a lot. But here, in the Fishergirl’s Luck, he seemed more contemplative, more serious, somehow. Part of her wondered if that was deliberate, as if he were trying to show her a different side of himself, and if that was the case she was surprised he would bother, or think it necessary.
Liam moved, caught her watching him and raised an eyebrow, his dark eyes laughing at her. Anna smiled and looked down at her glass.
‘I’m trying to work out what you’re doing here, Liam Harper, taking up space on my floor.’
He looked at his watch. ‘I guess it’s late. Should I go?’
‘That’s not—’ she paused, then smiled again, aware of how what she was about to say would sound. ‘That’s not what I meant. You don’t have to go. I just… I don’t know why you’re here at all.’
‘I like you, and I got the impression you liked me,’ he said, simply. ‘That’s all. I wanted to know you better.’
‘You could have asked me to go out for a drink with you instead of turning up at my door in a gale.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘But both of the nearest pubs will be full of people who know me and know of you, and I didn’t think you’d be too comfortable sitting in a corner chatting with half the coastline listening in. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going tonight and the gale means it’s unlikely anyone saw me arrive at your door.’
Anna opened her mouth and then shut it again. ‘I suppose so.’
‘I also figured, given what you seem to have left behind in London, that gossip might be something you’d like to avoid.’
‘You’re not wrong there,’ she admitted.
‘Besides, you would have said no, because it would have been too much like having to make a deliberate choice to go out with me, and for some reason you’ve decided that would be a bad thing to do. So I thought what you needed was to get to know me behind closed doors. Has it worked?’
Anna laughed. ‘Seriously, have you so exhausted the choice of women in the area that you needed to grab the first new one to move in?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’m going home in three months. And I… am not planning to take anyone home with me, put it that way. And you… don’t want to start anything that might actually be the start of anything, because you’re not planning to stay either, and you’ve recently come to the end of something long and painful. Am I right?’
‘Hmm,’ she said, watching as he put down his wine glass. ‘You are, as it happens.’
‘There you go then,’ he said, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Perfect for each other, that’s us, right now.’
Anna again laughed and gulped more wine because actually his argument was a pretty decent one and besides that, he was gorgeous and seeming more so by the minute. Dammit.
‘There is another reason,’ he said, as he moved closer, still on the floor, eyes still locked with hers.
She took a breath, cleared her throat and put down her wine glass. ‘And that is?’
Liam stopped, kneeling beside where she sat on the sofa. He reached up and touched her cheek before stroking his fingers through her hair. ‘You’re beautiful.’
Anna couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. Her good sense seemed to have abandoned her completely and her heart was in overdrive. ‘Flatterer,’ she said, her voice distinctly uneven.
‘It’s true,’ he whispered, and then his lips were against hers, his hand was in her hair, and her insides were in the most delicious kind of freefall.
‘I don’t know,’ she murmured, a minute or so later, ‘if I think this is a good idea.’
He let her go and sat back on his haunches, looking up at her. She felt the separation like a chill wind. ‘All right. That’s fine. I’ll go.’
Liam went to get up but she stopped him, one hand against his cheek. Say yes, she thought. While you’re here, say yes to as many things as you can.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’
Twelve
Anna woke before it was light the next morning, just as Liam was slipping out of bed. When he saw she was awake he leaned down to kiss her.
‘I was trying not to wake you. Go back to sleep,’ he said quietly. ‘The storm’s blown itself out. I’m going to make my way back before anyone’s up and about out there.’
She ran her fingers through his hair, then tugged gently at one dark lock. ‘You don’t have to, Kiwi.’
Liam smiled and then kissed her again, the touch lingering. ‘I’ll write down my number and leave it on the table. Call me any time – if I can answer, I will. If I don’t it’ll be because I’m working.’
Anna shifted under the covers, watching him pull on his boxers. The rest of his clothes were still downstairs. ‘I hope you managed to get some sleep. It’s been a long time since I slept in a single bed with company.’
He laughed. ‘It wasn’t so bad. I spend a lot of time in bunks, remember? Right. I’m going.’ He kissed her again and was gone.
She listened to him moving around downstairs as he dressed. There was a couple of minutes’ silence, then more footsteps. He came back up the stairs, quickly, and a second later he was pressing her into the bed, kissing her hard, the roughness of his knitted sweater scratching against her breasts, the fervent nature of the kiss making her laugh against his stubble. Then he was gone again, his feet loud on the stairs. The door of the Fishergirl’s Luck clicked shut behind him.
Anna stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes. Her body was pleasantly heavy, drowsy in all the right ways. She thought about getting up, but felt her eyes closing instead.
When she woke again, dawn light was edging through her window. Downstairs, the Fishergirl’s Luck held a new kind of stillness, the sort left in the wake of activity. Liam’s note was on the coffee table, scrawled in an uneven hand: his number, and a brief message.
I had fun. Hope you did too. Call me.
<
br /> Smiling, Anna put the note back down on the table and went into the kitchen to make tea. Through the window the sea looked like tumbled green glass, its rough edges sanded smooth. Suddenly what she most wanted was to be outside, in fresh air.
* * *
The track was wet with the recent downpour, the grass either side of it bent over and glistening with the weight of rain. The wind was still brisk, plucking at Anna’s hair and jacket, scattering the bright yellow petals of the storm-battered gorse before her as she walked. It was the first time she’d been up on the cliff alone, and without Bill’s big paws stampeding ahead and Glynn and David to chat to, it seemed like a foreign landscape. Everywhere was green, from the ocean stretching choppily into the brightening horizon to the earth beneath her feet.
Anna pulled in huge lungfuls of air and pushed on, enjoying the buffet and rush of the damp air, thinking of nothing and everything. It wasn’t until she glanced down and saw that the route she was walking had dwindled into not much more than a rabbit track that Anna realized she must have stepped away from the path. Looking behind her she also saw that she’d come much closer to the cliff – over the edge of it, in fact, and had begun to make her way down a sloping dip that descended the cliff face itself. She stopped, considering her options. Ahead of her the route got steeper, dropping down towards the water, but it didn’t seem impassable. Besides, although it was overgrown and narrow, there clearly was a track that had been trodden by feet other than hers. She thought it probably led around the promontory towards Troup Head and Pennan, and wondered if it were possible to walk all the way around the edge of the cliff. Might there be a walk like the one that led from Crovie to Gardenstown?
She decided to push onwards a little further, enjoying the blast of wind in her face and the new view of the cliff. Crovie had vanished behind her and it felt as if she were teetering on the edge of the world. Anna walked on. The path grew steadily more broken and precipitous. In places she had to descend with one hand braced against the wet brush to find her footing, until finally the path disappeared altogether beneath the tangled weight of a gorse bush that had grown right across it. It was frustrating, given how close she now was to the water – close enough that she could see the waves dashing themselves into white churn against the rock, which here was black rather than red. Anna could see a tiny beach, too, a miniature cove sheltering beneath the overhang, bounded by the verdant growth of a plant she thought was probably sea purslane.
Looking back up the way she had come, it occurred to Anna that she had descended much further and on far steeper a route than she had realized as she’d walked.
In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, and stepped off the track to circumnavigate the voluminous gorse. I’ve come this far, I might as well see if I can get to the purslane.
Anna had almost reached the sand when she heard a shout. It came, not from the cliff, but from the water. She was in the process of negotiating a particularly steep and slippery bit of rock and stopped, twisting her head over her shoulder. Bobbing on the waves was a wooden dinghy painted in stripes of turquoise blue and white and bearing two figures, one of whom she recognized as Robert MacKenzie.
‘Hi!’ she called.
‘What are you doing?’ he called back.
Anna jumped down onto the narrow spit of sand so that she could face him and saw that the other person in the boat was a boy of about ten. He had a mop of sandy hair that closely resembled Robert’s, and could only be his son. He also wore a miniature version of Old Robbie’s yellow fisherman’s jacket and had a pair of serious-looking binoculars around his neck to match the serious look on his small face.
‘I’m taking a walk,’ she shouted.
‘Down the cliff?’ Robert asked, his incredulity clear despite the noise of the waves and the wind.
‘I didn’t meant to come down it, I just—’
A gust of wind stole her words, throwing them to the sky. He held up a hand to cup his ear. She started to yell again, and then gave up, holding up her arms in an expansive shrug. Anna expected him to wave a goodbye and carry on, but instead she saw that they were bringing the boat onto the shore. Its pilot came close to beaching it and jumped out, the water up to his thighs as he dragged the dinghy up onto the sand. Young Robbie jumped out after him.
‘The cliff isn’t safe,’ Old Robbie said, as they got nearer. ‘Especially not after a storm like that. Look.’
He pointed up and Anna followed the direction of his outstretched hand to see fresh signs of scarring where the shallow earth had slipped its tether and slid down the underlying rock. In places it had obscured the narrow path she’d been on – she just hadn’t noticed as she’d picked her way along it. From her viewpoint it had looked like the natural bearing of the cliff.
‘Did that happen last night?’
‘Some of it. The erosion is getting worse every year.’
‘Right,’ Anna said, feeling slightly queasy as she realized what a fall on the cliff would have meant. ‘Okay. Well, lesson learned. Thanks. I guess I’d better be careful going back up.’
‘You can come in the Silver Darling.’ The voice came from the boy, his face still solemn. ‘We’ll take you. It’ll be safer.’
Anna smiled at him. ‘That’s very kind. Thank you.’
The boy didn’t smile back, only nodded and pushed his glasses up his nose. His dad looked at his watch.
‘We’d better go or you’re going to be late for school. We’re cutting it fine as it is.’
‘I can’t be late again, Dad!’
Old Robbie laid a hand on his son’s shoulder, propelling the boy back towards the boat. ‘Well, whose idea was it to drag me out on dolphin patrol before breakfast, eh? I was all for pancakes, but no, it was all about the dolphins, wasn’t it?’
‘Hang on,’ Anna called after them. ‘Two seconds, I want to—’ she dashed over to the purslane, bending to snatch a few handfuls. It was easier said than done, the stiff stalks refusing to break easily. After a few seconds in which she waged a pathetic losing battle with the local flora, a shadow fell across her and a hand appeared over her shoulder, holding out an open utility knife. ‘Thanks,’ she said, taking it and cutting at the plant. She stood up and turned, closing the knife and holding it out. Robert was watching her with an amused expression. It crinkled the lines around his eyes like the ripples on a sea on its way to becoming unsettled.
‘Dad!’ Young Robbie called out, behind them. He was already in the dinghy. ‘Come on!’
Old Robbie helped her into the boat and then pushed off, hauling himself from the water and over the side without even seeming to lose a breath. Anna settled herself on one of the narrow benches and then they were off, the older MacKenzie manning the rudder with practised ease. Anna sat facing him, his son beside her, and watched as the boy pulled a rolled-up exercise book out of his pocket. The words ‘Dolphin Patrol Notes’ had been written with felt pen in haphazardly bold lettering on the front. Young Robbie retrieved a pen from the pocket of his yellow jacket and bent over a new page. After writing the date at the top he began diligently making notes.
‘Did you see any this morning?’ Anna asked him. When he nodded, she added, ‘That’s wonderful. I’ve never seen a dolphin.’
He looked up at that. ‘What, never?’
Anna shook her head. ‘Not in the wild. I’d love to, though.’
‘You will,’ the boy said confidently. ‘There’s a pod in the bay at the moment and I think they’re going to have at least one baby.’
‘A baby dolphin! Now that I would like to see.’
‘That’s why we came round to the cove,’ Young Robbie went on. ‘It’s on their route and we needed to check for nets.’ He chewed his pen for a minute, eyeing the bushy bunch of purslane in her hand. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.
Anna held up the leaves. ‘This? It’s called sea purslane. You can eat it.’
The boy wrinkled his nose. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. It’s very salty.’
She snapped off a leaf and ate it as he watched with fascination. ‘Want to try?’
Young Robbie hesitated, looking at his dad. Old Robbie smiled and nodded. ‘Anna knows what she’s about,’ he said. ‘She’s a chef.’
The boy picked a leaf and gingerly put it between his lips, nibbling carefully. A surprised look came over his face. ‘It tastes like the sea!’
‘It does,’ Anna agreed. ‘That’s why it goes well with fish and other seafood.’
‘What are you going to make with it?’
‘Don’t know yet. I just thought I’d better grab some. After all, that’s the last time I’m going to be on that cliff.’
‘It’s all right,’ Young Robbie said. ‘When you want to pick some more we can take you in the boat, can’t we, Dad?’
Anna looked over at Old Robbie, who was still smiling. ‘Sure. Of course we can.’
‘This is my boat really,’ Young Robbie explained. ‘Auntie Bren left it to me. But I’m still learning how to use it.’
‘It’s a fine boat. And you can do your dolphin patrols in it, too.’
The boy smiled for the first time. ‘You can come on one of those, as well, if you like. We get really close sometimes. Not too close, though. We don’t want to disturb them, just observe them.’ He said this as if it might have been a mantra learned from somewhere.
Anna smiled back. ‘I would love to. Thank you.’
They rounded the cliff and swung into Crovie’s little harbour. Old Robbie coasted easily up to the jetty, keeping the engine running as Anna got up to climb out.
‘Thank you, kind gentlemen,’ she said to them both. ‘For rescuing a damsel who hadn’t even realized she was in distress.’
The House Beneath the Cliffs Page 9
