He goes back to eating. ‘So what were you doing, before this?’
She looks up, startled. He watches her trying to collect herself, wonders what he’s said to provoke that reaction.
‘Long story,’ she says. Then she adds, ‘I did some travelling after uni. Far East, Australia, Thailand. Then I worked for a pharmaceutical company. Then I had a bit of time off. And now I’m here.’
That wasn’t a long story at all. In fact it was a notably short one. He waits for her to carry on and tell him about the ‘time off’, but she doesn’t. There is a silence that starts out like a moment of blessed peace after all the talking, but quickly becomes awkward. He fumbles for something to say to change the subject, to make her feel better. To unfreeze her.
‘You got family?’
There’s a pause while she chews, swallows. ‘Yes. Mum and Dad. Older sister.’
‘You close?’
‘I guess.’
‘Boyfriend?’ Get that one out of the way, he thinks.
‘No. At least – no. You?’
‘Ha!’ he says. ‘No. Nor a girlfriend either.’
‘I guess it’s not easy, sustaining a relationship when you live out here.’
‘I don’t do relationships.’
He thinks she might be about to ask him more about that, and to bring that line of conversation to an end he gets to his feet, the chair legs scraping noisily on the tiled floor, making her jump. He puts his plate in the sink and turns on the tap. Then she’s beside him, with her plate, and picking up a tea towel to dry.
‘That was really good,’ she says. ‘Shall we take it in turns to cook? I don’t mind if we do.’
He shrugs. ‘I’ll cook anyway. You eat it, if you want to.’
He feels her tense beside him and he realises what he said probably sounded ungrateful.
‘I mean, you’ll be cooking down at the bird observatory. Don’t want to do it twice, do you?’
‘I suppose not.’
Bess whines at the door, and Rachel goes to let her out. The fresh air fills the kitchen again and he can smell rain on the wind. Tomorrow will be wet, he thinks. He has grown used to reading the island, reading the clouds. He is not always right. But in the morning, whatever the weather, he’ll have forgotten his prediction in any case. You deal with it, as it comes. You eat what the boat brings you, you fix things that are broken, you deal with ginger-haired arts graduates that wash up on your island. You wait for the right moment to speak up.
This isn’t the right moment. Not yet.
The dog scampers back in, and Rachel closes the door behind her and resumes her drying up.
‘What about you?’ she asks, as if she’s resuming a conversation that broke off minutes before. ‘How come you’re working here?’
He doesn’t answer straight away. He has a sudden desire to tell her, to actually say the words. Nobody has asked him this question, ever. The interactions he has with the birdwatchers, the scientists and the staff from the Forth Islands Trust that turn up every once in a while are all necessarily brief and functional. Even when conversations get a little deeper, it’s usually about birds, or seals, or whales, or the tide or the weather or the wildflowers and the dense, springy turf. Nobody has asked him anything personal for, probably, years.
I’m here because I’m going to kill someone. I’m here because I can’t be trusted.
He doesn’t say it. He thinks of an answer to her question – how come he’s here? And that question in particular, of all the questions she could ask him, is the one perhaps he’s most desperate to answer, while at the same time not being able to.
He looks at her, briefly, finds those bright blue eyes studying him intently, and looks away again.
‘That’s my long story,’ he says. And leaves it there.
Rachel
I don’t do relationships.
He said that, and Rachel thought to herself that it sounded like a bloody brilliant way of going through life, because relationships generally were shit, weren’t they? Although she didn’t say this out loud. If she’d followed that policy she might not have gone through the whole Amarjit thing and then she’d be a lot better off now.
He hasn’t messaged her for a while now. She’d thought that when he stopped messaging things would get easier, but they haven’t. She should have blocked him, but she hasn’t. She pretends this is because she is being an adult by being civilised towards him even after everything that happened, because she is a good person, she is kind, and because he sometimes used to cry on the phone to her and she was worried he might hurt himself.
Almost eighteen months have passed since their relationship came to an abrupt end. He has not left his wife. He has not hurt himself.
She’d kept the messages because she had thought about sending them to his wife. Because she deserves to know. And maybe then the woman would leave him, serve him fucking right, and then maybe he’d think twice about doing it to someone else.
But she hasn’t done this either, because she also knows that his wife isn’t going to leave him, because it turns out she knew about Rachel when it happened and she didn’t leave him then. So she would be sending the screenshots of his messages to her for another reason: to hurt her. To make her see that he was still contacting her even after it was supposedly over. And that would surely serve no purpose but to wound. Now, too much time has passed for her to get away with the ‘look what your arsehole of a husband is still doing’ approach.
Women like to talk about girl code and sisterhood and fixing each other’s crowns. Women don’t mean to hurt each other, but they still do it. They’d almost rather hurt each other than hurt the bastard who caused the situation in the first place. That’s what love does to you.
While Rachel is still wiping things dry, Fraser empties the sink and puts the plates in the cupboard. She watches as everything goes away, trying to memorise where it belongs so she doesn’t spend time opening and shutting cupboards and ending up guessing.
‘I’m going to bed,’ he says, when he’s finished, offering Bess a dog biscuit. He makes her sit for it. ‘If you’re staying up, turn off the light when you’re done.’
She looks at her watch. It’s just gone nine p.m. but it feels later. She is bone-tired from the stress of the past few days. ‘I’m ready for bed too. It’s been a long day.’
She leaves him to turn all the lights off and heads for the stairs. In the bedroom, her backpack is still lying on the floor. She pulls things out half-heartedly, hanging a shirt and a hoodie up in the wardrobe that smells very odd. Musty. She finds her washbag and goes to the bathroom, but the door is closed. A strip of light shines from underneath it.
Bess comes up the stairs and looks almost startled to see Rachel there. The dog sits, looks at the closed bathroom door, looks back at Rachel, as though there’s a queue and she’s not sure if she’s joined the back of it.
Rachel waits for a minute on the landing, in case he’s about to finish in there and she can nip in to have a wash. His bedroom door is open, the bedside light illuminated. A big bed – kingsize, by the look of it – with a cotton duvet cover on it that might once have been the epitome of ’80s masculine black with a red stripe through it, but now is faded to grey. It’s crumpled, and the room is certainly lived-in – a pile of books beside the bed – she was wrong about him not being a reader, then – clothes on the chair, although they are folded. Her mind is on other things – on what this room reminds her of. She is looking for something but not really expecting to find it: some explanation of why this man is living here in complete isolation, how he deals with it.
Then her mind swims back to focus on where she is, and then she sees it and can’t unsee it.
On the bedside table, next to the pile of books. The oddest thing, and at first glance it doesn’t look in any way scary or dodgy, it’s just that it looks out of place.
And then she hears steps inside the bathroom and she knows he’s about to come on to the landing, and she dives b
ack to her own room and shuts the door.
Just in the nick of time. She can hear him treading the thin carpet between the bathroom and his room next door. Then his door closes, firmly. She sits on the edge of her bed, breathless with terror.
It was a knife.
Not just any knife, one of those huge fuck-off hunting knives with a serrated edge. A weapon.
What’s he doing with it? You don’t need a knife like that to cut a butternut squash. And in any case, why is it in his bedroom? Next to his bed?
There’s only one thing it could mean. He’s scared of someone.
And the only person here is her.
Fraser
Fraser lies in bed wondering if he should lock his door.
That the rooms here have locks in the first place is quite strange, given the isolation of the place. You have to trust people if you’re going to live with them, miles from anywhere, don’t you? If you’re going to steal something, where would you even take it? He thinks about locking the door, but she will hear it – the key turning in the lock – and to do so would imply that he is afraid of her; that he thinks that she will come into his room unexpectedly. Or, worse, that he doesn’t trust himself not to hurt her without a locked door between them to give him time to come to his senses.
All those rather sweet things she said about it being weird, about her moving in to his house – it was her way of bringing it up. You’re not going to kill me, are you?
Of course he’s not going to kill her. Of course he’s not going to hurt her.
Is he?
He has thought a lot about crime, and justice, in the past four years. Violence. Retribution. Guilt. Absolution. Forgiveness. They are abstract concepts, but he has given each of them careful consideration. He has thought about it so much it’s borderline obsessive.
And it’s not as if he has no experience of violence. If she knew this, if she knew what he is capable of, what he has thought of doing, she would be calling Robert right now and asking for the boat to come back.
On his infrequent trips back to the mainland Fraser spends a long time in the second-hand book shop in Market Street in St Andrews, donating back to them a bag of those he’s read and taking another pile away with him – true crime, legal thrillers, a bit of Dickens; sometimes he will just pick books on a whim. The owner has taken to putting books aside for him, ones he thinks he’ll enjoy, and invariably he takes the whole pile.
He doesn’t know what it is he’s looking for, but he’s searching each book for it. It’s the answer everyone wants, isn’t it? Aren’t some things we do simply beyond forgiveness? How can anyone ever be forgiven, for taking a life?
Now he’s lying there listening to Rachel using the bathroom next door, hearing the rattle of the water through the pipes, hearing her sniff, and cough. He shouldn’t be listening but the sounds are so alien to him. In the silent moments he forgets quickly, and then hears something and it makes him jump.
He has been living with this a long time, he thinks.
Living with the ghosts.
Rachel
Rachel wakes up suddenly, disorientated, wondering what has woken her. The room is dark, utterly black, apart from a strange intermittent glow. It takes her a minute to realise that it must be the light from the lighthouse, sweeping the dark skies. In between circuits, she can only just make out the shape of the window. Inky dark, still, outside.
She waits, heart thumping, and then she hears it again. A low moan from somewhere.
It’s him, of course; it has to be him. Nobody else here it could be, is there?
Silence, for a while, and then the moan again, which rises and becomes a shout. Is he in pain? What’s going on? She picks up her phone and sees that it’s half-past two. Then she turns on the bedside light because she can feel herself getting scared, and she wants to see the edges of the room she’s in, to get a sense of place.
It comes again, louder, sounding almost afraid. Angry afraid. And a ‘No!’ to go with it.
Definitely a nightmare, she thinks. She remembers the knife. What if he sleepwalks, too? With a knife?
And then she hears a single word, like a question, rasped out: ‘Maggie …?’
She climbs out of bed and opens the door. The hallway is just as it was last night, of course, Fraser’s door still firmly closed, the light off. Bess is outside his door on the landing. When the dog sees Rachel she rises to a sit, gives a small whine. Rachel goes to her and strokes her head reassuringly, then carries on to the bathroom and turns on the light, shutting the door. She uses the loo and pulls the ancient chain, which empties the cistern noisily. Perhaps that will be enough to bring him out of the dream he’s having.
When she goes back down the hallway, the light is on under his door.
‘Fraser?’ Rachel says. ‘Are you all right?’
He doesn’t reply. She thinks she can hear breathing from the other side of the door, but perhaps it’s just the blood roaring in her ears. She heads back to bed and turns off the light, lying there for a long time thinking about it. He has nightmares. Lots of people do. And maybe he’s never known about it before because there’s been nobody here to wake him up, or be disturbed by the noise.
Now Rachel can’t sleep. It’s only watching for the strange brightness that comes and goes with a lovely rhythm that’s calming her down. It’s almost hypnotic.
And of course, now, she can’t stop wondering: who is Maggie?
3
Learning
Fraser
Fraser opens his bedroom door to see Bess lying on the landing outside Rachel’s room, facing it, her head on her paws. She lifts her head to look at him, and then lowers it again almost immediately. He wonders what she’s doing there. The dog usually sleeps downstairs next to the range, where it’s warm, or sometimes in his room when the weather is mild. Last night he had closed his door, of course – maybe she objected to being shut out.
Then he remembers something: Rachel outside his door, asking if he was all right. He’d heard her going to the bathroom, and then that. Of course he was all right. Why wouldn’t he be?
He must have made some sort of noise. Another nightmare, maybe. He has vague memories of sitting on the edge of the bed, again, head in his hands. Fuck.
The girl is already wary of him, she’s made that clear. Although he can’t blame her. None of them on the mainland have given a passing thought to how fucking awkward this is, the shoving together of a man and a woman who’ve never even met, forcing them to share a house and a kitchen and a bathroom in complete isolation. For all she knows, he could be a rapist. For all he knows, she might be a psychopath. They hadn’t considered that, either, had they?
And he’d been expecting Julia, anyway; he’d been prepared for Julia. She has worked for the Trust before, although he has not met her. He has seen pictures of her on some field trip, holding up a rock which was clearly something significant.
He goes downstairs and puts on some porridge, remembering the moment when he hauled Rachel up on to the jetty by the waistband of her jeans. What an introduction. Welcome to the island, try not to fall off the boat.
And here we are, day two, and he still hasn’t told her.
He’s going to have to tell her today, that’s for sure; it can’t go on any longer. Although she might not last, might not cope, and there’s still a chance she will phone Craig this morning and demand to be taken off the island, especially if he’s been shouting obscenities in the night. He will see, when she gets up. If she wants to leave, then she can go and she won’t need to be any the wiser.
And Julia will be here before too long, and she will be off looking at her mosses and lichens and he will be left in peace. He understands scientists. He’s had plenty of them here on the island over the years. He knows that even while you’re talking to them, mostly they are thinking about their subject. And the rest of the time they’d prefer it if you didn’t talk to them at all.
Meanwhile, he will try to sleep. Try to stay quiet.<
br />
Try not to think about murder.
Rachel
When Rachel wakes up the next day, she can tell from the silence in the lighthouse that Fraser has already gone out.
The kitchen is clean and tidy but there is a pan on the stove with some porridge left in it. He has left her a bowl and a spoon at the place where she sat for dinner last night, so she assumes that the porridge is for her. There is also a mugful of coffee left in the filter jug. Possibly he is saving that for his mid-morning break, but she takes the risk and pours it into a mug, washes up the jug and empties the filter of the steaming coffee grounds.
The porridge is rich and creamy, with a hint of something in it, something alcoholic. It’s delicious and warming and fills her up.
She washes the pot and her bowl and dries them, trying to remember which cupboard the clean dishes go in.
Outside it is grey and cold, a strong wind blowing. Rachel is hopeful that the sun might break through later. She pulls on her fleece and boots and sets off for the bird observatory. On the way she sees Fraser, on the clifftop, Bess at his heels. Fraser is looking out to sea with a pair of binoculars and, squinting, she can just make out some birds floating on the waves a few hundred metres off the shoreline. He is too far away to hear her if she were to shout.
The bird observatory is warm, and smells of the chilli she left in the slow cooker overnight. It has developed into a rich-looking sauce and she stirs it, scraping in the dark bits from the edges. Gives it a taste.
Somehow she has added too much salt. Fuck. She grimaces at it, wonders what she can do to fix it; adds another can of chopped tomatoes. Now it looks watery. She gives it another stir, leaves it cooking. Hopefully that will dilute the salt a bit, and by the time they come to eat it this evening it’ll be okay. If it’s not, she’ll have to do jacket potatoes. Or something.
You, Me & the Sea Page 6