The whole thing – interacting with the two of them – is getting easier, and harder at the same time. Lefty goes out to put the chickens away for the night. Fraser has his back to her.
She wants to get this out of the way early, so that she can get used to whatever he says in response. She’s been thinking about how to approach it, how to ask, whether to try and lead him into the topic gradually or whether to skirt around it, and as always she ends up just blurting it out.
‘Did you see Kelly?’
He doesn’t look round. For about five seconds he stops snapping the asparagus stalks. Then he says, ‘I did, aye.’
‘She okay?’
‘She’s fine.’
There is a long, hollow pause. Waiting for him to say something else, wondering if he’s going to elaborate. There is no sign of Lefty and Rachel suddenly wishes he were here, because she is better at keeping her emotions in check when Lefty’s around.
Then there is a weird rollercoaster moment, a quick one-two in which suddenly everything is brilliant, and then everything is not very good at all.
‘I was telling her about you,’ he says, really quite cheerfully.
‘Oh?’ She wants to ask him to elaborate, but she doesn’t get a chance. He turns around, leans back against the counter, looks at her. There’s something going on behind his eyes. Either she’s got better at seeing it, or he is being less careful about what he gives away.
‘Thing is,’ he says, ‘we shouldn’t be doing this.’
She feels her stomach drop. ‘Doing what?’
He makes a vague circle with his finger. ‘This,’ he says. ‘This whatever it is that you want to call it. This having sex all the time.’
She raises an eyebrow that she hopes suggests a vague what the fuck that she can’t quite bring herself to express.
‘I don’t want you to get hurt,’ he says.
‘I’m doing just fine,’ she says, really quite coldly. ‘But, you know. Whatever you think. Given that I’ll be leaving on the eighth. I guess you’re just getting it out of the way now, right?’
‘Rachel …’ he says.
She stares at him. She is absolutely not going to cry. Not now, not later when she’s alone. She is not going to let him see anything – no disappointment, no hurt, no anger. He has been absolutely clear about everything all the way through. He has been fair.
She wants to yell at him, in truth. She wants to remind him that he’s been as enthusiastic about what happened between them as she has. She has wanted him fiercely because the pleasure he’s given her has been like nothing she’s had before, but even so she has not pressured him, she has not asked him for anything, and still this same thing is happening, and it feels a lot like rejection. And even when there is no fucking relationship, she wants to shout, it still fucking hurts.
But it’s too late to take it back now. It’s already done.
‘Yes?’ she says, smiling.
‘I’m sorry. I’m giving you mixed messages. I just wanted to make things clear. Right?’
‘No more sex,’ she says, her voice tight and cold. ‘I got it.’
In the doorway, Lefty gives a little cough.
‘Ah, fuck’s sake, you wee scrote,’ Fraser says. ‘You been listening?’
‘No,’ Lefty says, alarmed. ‘I just got here.’
‘Fucking sit down, then.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Rachel says. ‘It’s not his fault you’re in a bad mood, is it?’
Lefty’s eyes widen, staring at her, then he looks over to Fraser as if he’s ready to leap in between them. Fraser brings over two of the plates, puts them down on the table with a tiny bit more force than might be required, but thankfully not enough to break anything.
‘It usually is his fucking fault,’ he growls. ‘Pardon me if I got it wrong for a change.’
Here we go, she thinks. Another man who always has to have the last word.
Fraser
Before dinner Fraser had retrieved his bag from the hallway. He has bought her, as requested, some ridiculously expensive shampoo, three pairs of thick wool socks size 4–7, and four of the worst-looking gossip magazines he’s ever seen in his life, one of which includes a photo-exposé extending to six pages that mainly consists of two celebrities he’s never heard of going for a walk in a park in London. He had stared at all the magazines for ages before finally just picking some at random. They all looked as bad as each other, and the expression on the cashier’s face as she scanned the contents of his basket – the magazines, plus dark chocolate, four bottles of single malt and a box of condoms – said a lot.
He left the rest of it and brought out one of the whiskies, the Balvenie, and the magazines. He does not exactly regret buying the condoms, as he had only one left, but he’s wondering now whether they are going to be left to go out of date. He had a large slug of whisky while he was cooking.
The conversation over dinner has been pretty much non-existent, although she has expressed some gratitude for what he’d bought her, insisted on paying him back, even for the socks, which now aren’t going to get a lot of wear.
As soon as he’s finished eating, Lefty mumbles his thanks, washes up his plate and scarpers.
Rachel is sipping her wine – a beautiful cold Orvieto that went well with the risotto. ‘This is lovely,’ she says, ‘as always. Thanks.’
‘Nae bother,’ he says, glad that she is apparently talking to him after all.
‘It’s not that I don’t care about you,’ he ventures, after a pause. ‘I don’t want you to think that.’
‘Oh, please,’ she says. ‘We both knew it was coming. Don’t go all soft on me.’
He doesn’t want to get drunk but it feels as if that’s what’s going to happen and he doesn’t have the energy to get out of the way. He’s already halfway there, or more than halfway, because he has had more of the wine than Rachel has. The bottle’s empty and she’s still on her first glass. He’s going to need to rely on her to be strong, he thinks, and that’s a bit fucking unfair of him, given what he’s just done.
While he washes up she tells him about the guttering, and the puffins, and he listens, or rather he doesn’t, because he’s thinking about Rachel leaving and someone else coming and how the hell he’s going to cope with that. He doesn’t want anyone else. He wants her. He wants her to stay forever. He wants Julia to cease to exist. But it’s fine. It’s all fine. Rachel will probably forgive him, and maybe she has already, if she even had a problem with it in the first place, which he’s suddenly not sure about.
It would have been easier if she’d cried, or if he’d seen some sort of upset on her face. Then he could feel like a shit but at the same time know that he had absolutely done the right thing at the right time because she is vulnerable and lonely and she has begun to get – he searches in his fogged brain for the right word – attached. But instead she had just looked at him, maybe a little surprised, maybe a little bit disappointed, but with something resolute and casual about the expression on her face. As though she’s okay either way.
Which means, he realises with a jolt that makes him want to pour another glass of the Balvenie, which means that he’s the one with the feelings, and she’s the one that’s mastered the casual thing. Fuck. And to make matters worse the whisky has loosened his tongue and, where she had always been the one nervously filling the silence with chatter, to his utter horror and confusion he’s doing it himself.
‘She’s got herself a new place,’ he says, ‘yet again. Kelly. A nice wee house right enough, but she’s going to end up moving on again before too long, I can see it, aye. Like she cannae stay anywhere longer than a few months and it’s not good for the boy. He’s good at school, she says, and yet she cannae stay in one place long enough for him to get settled.’
‘How old is he?’ she asks.
He wonders vaguely at what point he told her about Charlie. He can’t remember telling her but he must have done, and he can’t even really remember coming i
nto the living room but he must have done that, too, because he is on the sofa and she is curled up in the armchair, the woodburner is lit – she did that, he remembers her crouching – and the bottle of Balvenie is looking like it’s about half-full. That can’t be right. He looks at the clock. It’s nearly eleven.
‘Six,’ he says. ‘Seven on the twenty-fifth of July.’ There is a little pause, then he adds, out of the blue, ‘Two days before your niece’s christening.’
‘Oh. I’d forgotten about that. I guess I won’t have the excuse of being on the island any more.’
‘Your sister will be delighted. You’d better RSVP, though, or she might not have space for you.’
‘Don’t. She’ll be all huffy as it is.’
‘Still want me to come with you?’
‘Of course. If you can stand it.’
‘I’ve never been to Norwich.’
He’s not even sure if she’s joking, but she leaves the silence to stretch, sipping at her wine. He thinks he has drunk too much. Then he opens his mouth to confirm it.
‘She wanted to know all about you,’ he says. ‘She was all over it. I don’t know what it is wi’ you women, wanting to know everything about each other.’
‘We all have this need to compare notes,’ Rachel says evenly.
‘I told her you were gorgeous.’ He goes to say more, stops himself. Something at the back of his brain is firing off, some sort of drunken defence mechanism.
‘Well, that’s nice. Anything else?’
‘Just that you’re good to me. She said she’d like to meet you.’
He sees her eyes widen, thinks maybe that she finds the idea alarming. ‘Och, don’t worry. She’s never met anyone before, I mean, not that there’s been anyone before. Nobody’s met anybody. Whatever.’
More whisky, he thinks. It will help him gather his thoughts.
‘You’re a bit drunk, Fraser, I think.’
‘Aye, well. Drowning my sorrows, right enough. Aye.’
‘What sorrows would those be?’
‘The losing you ones.’
‘Losing me? How are you losing me?’
‘You’re going and that other woman’s coming instead. And I don’t want you to go.’
‘You seem to be having trouble deciding what you want,’ she says.
Ah, fuck, he thinks. Somewhere in his brain the defences are ringing an alarm bell and some sort of siren alongside it. But he’s made the mistake of looking at her, curled up there with her hair in a long plait over her shoulder, and he can remember combing his fingers through her hair when she was asleep on him, and he’s never going to get to do that again, is he? And the loss of it is just, for a moment, a bit devastating.
He feels the cold, dawning horror of having made a massive fucking mistake.
‘I think I’d best go to bed,’ he says, and struggles to his feet.
He makes it to the door and then upstairs, somehow aware that she’s following behind him, as if she’s going to be able to stop him if he falls. If he falls backwards he will tumble straight into her and push her all the way down the stairs, and that’s why he’s holding on to the banister with both hands very tightly indeed. And now he feels like a fucking idiot and he goes into the bathroom, attempts to lock the door and fails, and gives up and goes for a piss. Pisses all over the floor and makes a half-hearted attempt to clean it up because he’s not a fucking barbarian and then he gives up on that too because when he bends over he nearly falls head-first into the pan.
When he leaves the bathroom the landing light is on but there is no sign of her. Bess is at the top of the stairs, as if she’s standing guard to stop him falling down them. She shoots him a look that says just about everything he’s feeling about himself.
‘Don’t you start,’ he says to her, and snorts.
She looks at him in disgust and turns to scratch her neck, flicking black hairs in his direction.
There is no sign of Rachel, but the light is on under her bedroom door.
‘Rachel,’ he says, outside. And then again, louder. ‘Rachel.’
‘You okay?’ comes the voice from inside.
‘Oh, aye. I’m just …’ he says, and forgets what he was going to say.
She opens the door. She looks so tiny, all that gorgeous red hair and the blue eyes and she used to kiss him, and he would do anything for one of those kisses right now. He reaches out a clumsy hand and tries to stroke her cheek, misses, catches her ear and then lands on her shoulder rather heavily. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says vaguely, breathing loudly through his nose. It sounds weird.
‘For what?’
‘All of it, all of the shite. You deserve better. Will you come to bed, Rachel?’
‘No,’ she says.
‘Why no?’
‘Because you’re drunk.’
‘Is that the only reason?’
She smiles at him, and he knows deep down that she thinks he is an absolute fucking loser.
‘You should get some sleep,’ she says. ‘Have you got a bucket?’
‘What for?’
‘Go to bed,’ she says. ‘I’ll get you one.’
Rachel
Rachel had not been expecting Drunk Fraser to put in quite such a dramatic appearance, nor for him to be quite so revealingly honest.
It takes a while, but eventually she finds a bucket in the workshop, removes the old rags and scrubbing brush and rinses it in the kitchen.
‘Fraser?’ She pushes open his bedroom door with some degree of trepidation.
He’s already asleep, or perhaps passed out, face-down and diagonally across his bed. He’s managed to get his jeans down to his ankles but other than that he’s still dressed. She pulls them off, turns them the right way out and folds them, leaving them on his chair. He has not moved a muscle. There’s no way on earth she is going to be able to wake him or move him. She puts the bucket at the side of the bed nearest to his head, turns on the bedside lamp so he can see it if he needs to, folds the duvet over him as much as she can, although he’s lying on it. Then she turns off the main light and pulls the door to. It’s very tempting to stay with him, in case he’s sick, in case he needs help, but she will hear, anyway, if he wakes up in the night.
And besides, she thinks, it’s entirely possible that he’s been at least this drunk before, and survived it.
Fraser
The weather worsens throughout the day.
Fraser sends Rachel a text message but gets no reply; after half an hour he takes the quad out in the driving rain and heads to the bird observatory.
When he opens the door the scent of a curry hits him. He is simultaneously ravenously hungry and very slightly nauseous. And also really quite ashamed of his behaviour last night, which he can scarcely remember. Which means it was bad.
‘Smells good,’ he says.
Rachel looks up from the hob and smiles. ‘Hope it tastes good. How are you doing?’
‘Not bad. How come you’re cooking?’
‘I ordered all the food for this week before they cancelled, can’t let it go off. So I’m doing some batch cooking for the freezer. It might help Julia out, who knows? Or maybe she’ll have to bin it because of the food safety issue.’
‘Can we have some of it for dinner?’
‘Sure, if you trust my cooking. Does Lefty like curry?’
‘Does he fuck. Is it beige and tasteless? No, then. Well, he doesn’t eat my curry, anyway.’
The bird observatory is spotless, warm, fragrant; welcoming and ready for the guests that didn’t come.
‘Might as well stay here for a bit, then,’ she says.
He’s been thinking the same. The cliff path is grim in this sort of weather, and he has no idea how to transport a pan full of curry back over the bumpy terrain. If they’re going to eat it, they might as well eat it here.
‘It’ll be twenty minutes or so for the rice. Did you bring anything to drink?’ she asks, bringing plates and cutlery over to the table where he’s parked himself.
‘You fucking kidding me?’
‘Well, there are some beers in the fridge. One of the previous lot left them behind.’
‘Aye, well, I can manage a beer if there’s one going.’
He watches her in the kitchen, thinking how weird it is, like being in her house. She’s got the radio on low, some classical station, not his sort of thing at all but somehow it feels soothing and civilised.
‘I guess I owe you an apology,’ he says eventually.
‘What for?’
‘I woke up to find a bucket by the bed. Was I that bad?’
‘You were pretty wasted.’
He has very little memory of it. Just the feeling of having absolutely ruined everything, drinking too fast in an attempt to escape from it.
‘Was I an arsehole?’
‘You were … honest. It was quite refreshing.’
He feels a flare of annoyance at that. ‘What d’you mean? I’m always honest.’
‘Open, then. Which you’re not, usually.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means I ask you things, and if you don’t want to answer them you change the subject or you walk away.’
‘What’s wrong with that? Some things I just don’t like talking about.’
‘Like Maggie,’ she says. ‘And Lefty.’
Oh, aye, he thinks. Here we go.
‘Look,’ she continues, popping the lids of two beer bottles and bringing them to the table, ‘I don’t want to pry into your business, yours or Lefty’s. But what you’ve got going on here – it’s just … it doesn’t feel right. I just think things would be so much better if you could manage to talk to each other.’
Outside, the wind has picked up and is blowing hard against the side of the building. She looks up as the window rattles slightly in its frame. He starts to wish he had left it at the text message, that he’d never come.
‘I’m not much good at talking,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen that for yourself.’
Because he can’t meet her eyes he looks at her hand on her knee, at the tiny freckles on the back of it, the framework of the bones. Has a sudden vision of it clutching his shoulder. How that feels.
You, Me & the Sea Page 33