by PJ Adams
“Otherwise... what is there?”
“What is it that you are doing here?” The words were out before she could stop herself, a continuation of that train of thought she’d been following before he re-emerged from the attic. “This life alone. What kind of a life is this?”
His eyes narrowed, briefly. His jaw flexed as if he was about to say something but then stopped.
“One day they’ll come for me,” he finally said. “People I’ve crossed. It’s inevitable.”
“So you wait. You invite them in.”
The tension in the air between them was like the dark clouds hanging over the sea outside.
Maggie clutched the dustsheets even tighter to her chest. Took a deep breath and resolved to say nothing more. She wasn’t here to fix his life. None of that mattered to her.
He nodded. “Maybe that’s what I’m doing.”
She shook her head, and he looked down, as if stung by her dismissal.
“What else can I do? I’ve lost everything I had. I walked away from it all.”
“Then stop walking away.”
She shouldn’t be giving this man advice. If he wanted to screw up his life it was nothing to her. Talking to him like this... she might blow everything.
But she went on – as her mother had often said, Miglë was not a child to let things go easily. “Whatever it is you run from, it is past,” she said. “Istorija.” History. “The person that you were before. That is a different person now. Yes? We all are changing. You should care most about what it is that matters to you now, not then. What will your life be, not what it was? Yes?”
She was stumbling over her words now, not sure why she suddenly felt so flustered, so unable to focus, distracted by this man and his failure to understand.
“You make it sound easy.”
“To live your life? It is easier than the alternative.” Why did he make her angry? Why did any of this matter? It’s not why she had come here.
He looked away, and she thought she’d driven him back under that dark cloud of his, the man who stood at the top of the cliffs and looked down.
Then those dark eyes flashed back up at her and he said, “Someone I used to know. A girl. No, not that. My brother’s girlfriend. She used to say something like that. Something her grandfather had said to her that she always reminded herself of. ‘Don’t just live your life, Jessica. Live it well, girl.’ She told me that once.”
“I like this Jessica already.”
How had he come to stand so close? When he’d come down the stairs, he hadn’t stopped just before her like this, toes almost touching hers, her arms where they folded across the dustsheets almost against his chest. Had he moved towards her as they played out this exchange? Had she moved towards him?
His head dipped towards her, his eyes still fixed on hers.
He paused, briefly, his breath hot on her cheek, and then his lips pressed against hers, dry and hard, tense. It wasn’t a romantic kiss. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, where the first contact of lips broke the tension like a flood barrier giving way.
It was a hesitancy that shifted to something that was almost aggressive and then a moment that fled rapidly. Something raw, governed by an incredible tension.
He pulled away, and an instant later she pulled back, too. Or had it been the other way around? Had she been the first to break the contact?
She stumbled back, one arm flailing as she realized she was at the top of the stairs. Catching herself. Finding the wall and pressing her spine against it, arms before her again, the bundle of dustsheets for protection.
She swallowed, and it was as if she were trying to swallow her pounding heart.
He stepped back, put the back of his hand to his mouth, turned his body away even as his eyes remained fixed on her, his frame twisting.
“I–”
“I–”
She turned, moved to the first step and glanced back, and already he was retreating to his attic room.
§
She cleaned the kitchen. The pan and utensils from where she had cooked lunch. The big Belfast sink. Cleaned it as if she were scrubbing her own mouth out, trying to erase what had happened.
Shock. She was in a state of shock, she decided.
She had not seen that coming. She tried desperately to work out if it was something she had brought on, an unspoken invitation, or if it was simply something someone like Owen Bailey did, an assumption that was automatic to a man like him.
It was the longest time before she allowed herself to consider her response.
The kiss could only have lasted a second or two, but... even that was longer than the brief instant it had taken to register what was happening and pull away. It wasn’t exactly a kiss that had lingered but it had... paused. Hesitated.
Was that just surprise kicking in? Or had there been a moment of, if not exactly wanting it to last then at least an element of not rushing to break it off?
She didn’t know why she was even thinking these things.
She shouldn’t be having to think such things. She was here to work. He was her employer. He was also a vicious and ruthless one-time crimelord, she was sure of that.
There were so many reasons she should not be having to think these things.
She had never thought of him in that way. The way of a man who might kiss her. She’d always had a neatness to her thoughts. Things were in their boxes, their categories. ‘Older man who was her employer’ did not overlap with any category she might kiss.
It took her far too long to realize that it was not so much the kiss as what went before that had shaken her.
The kiss was just a thing. Taken in isolation it could be dealt with. Men always abused their positions. They often misread the signs and got carried away.
It was the question of how they had come to be standing toe to toe, so close that something must happen. The uncertainty over whether it was he who had moved toward her or her to him, or both. How had they come to stand close enough that the possibility of that kiss had been a thing at all? How was it that when he had dipped his head down, she also had tipped her head up?
No, it was not the kiss that was the issue at all. It was the context of the kiss. The exchange it had been a part of.
And no matter how she framed it, no matter how it took her by complete surprise, that exchange had been a dialog, a two-way thing. The meeting of their lips had been mere punctuation to what had already been established.
7
Does everyone do it? Deny and hide things from themselves and then get surprised by what should have been downright bleeding obvious?
That’s what that kiss did to me. Stole up from nowhere and suckered me in, surprised me.
Maybe it shouldn’t have, but like I say, I don’t do this shit. I don’t fall.
It didn’t really, though. Steal up from nowhere. With hindsight there was plenty that led me there – I just didn’t see it coming.
There were lots of things in my head. Stuff from the past, stirred up and not quite able to settle again.
That call the night before from Reuben was the trigger.
I couldn’t work out exactly what he was after. He must know you can never go back, you can never undo. But he wanted at least some of it back, the old days, the world where you knew who was who and what the rules of the street were. It was all very well for someone like me and the boys to up sticks and leave all that behind, but part of what we’d left behind was Reuben, dumped and still trying to make sense of it all.
He’d made his choices, though. He’d chosen his life. I didn’t feel responsible.
But that didn’t mean a conversation like that couldn’t get under my skin, stop me from sleeping.
I’d gone out for a walk the morning after I’d spoken with Reuben. I headed west along the cliffs to where they dropped down towards the spreading saltmarshes of Weybourne and Salthouse, my waxed coat pulled tight around me against the blustering early autumn showers and wind.
Ask Maggie and she’d probably say she believed it was her words that got through to me and made me call Fearless that day, but in truth I was already one step ahead. I’d had that sleepless night, I’d gone for that stupid, moody walk on a day when any sane person would have stayed indoors. I’d turned everything over and over in my head and reached the conclusion that this couldn’t go on. The hiding. The waiting.
Talking to Reuben had made me understand all over again what was important in my life, however circumscribed that life may be. Maggie’s words had merely underlined that realization, that it was my family that mattered above anything else, and it was their loss that I felt most deeply.
I needed to drag myself out, to do as Jess’s grandfather had told her: to not just live life, but live it well.
Maggie had insisted on making lunch, a move that surprised me as normally she seemed more comfortable melting into the background, not intruding.
I watched her as she moved about the kitchen. Laughed as she fished out everything she needed from that bag of hers. Talked bollocks about Mary Poppins of all things – where had that come from?
Is that what you do when you fall? Talk crap simply because you can and you don’t want to lose hold of that moment you think you might be sharing?
I don’t know. Like I say, I’ve never been there.
There was nothing creepy about watching her like that, just... enjoying being around another person again. Enjoying the relaxedness of it. Enjoying seeing that kitchen being used for something more than three minutes and a beep, a knife used for more than piercing the plastic.
The conversation. Finding the right questions. Choosing what to reveal. It’s not even that this was something I missed from my lost life; it was new. Back in the day, we didn’t talk like this to get to know each other. Nobody asked questions of the Bailey Boys without there being an agenda. It was rare to just talk, even with those closest. Maybe late nights with Reuben in the Old Duchess had come close, when we’d talk crap and down a few drinks and... Well... Reuben was no Maggie, was he?
§
The kiss shouldn’t have surprised me as it did.
The first time I met Maggie, my mind had leaped beyond the usual, the man thing. That girl... she was a constant double-take for me. A glance, a passing comment, and then my brain would catch up, do a What was that? and I’d have to reassess.
I already knew there was some kind of spark, something that made me feel on edge at every interaction. Unsettled.
But the kiss wasn’t planned. It wasn’t the first stage of a coordinated seduction.
Hell, if it was a seduction it was a pretty damned crap one, wasn’t it?
After I’d spoken to Fearless, I’d felt the need to... to not be alone. I needed some of that thing, that being around another person thing we’d shared at lunchtime.
I didn’t understand that at the time. I’m trying to think it through, trying to make sense of that unspoken need I’d felt to leave my attic room retreat, and head down in the general direction of where she might be.
She was skulking around on the landing, clearly sensitive to my mood. She was making a pretense of doing something with a bundle of dustsheets but I saw through it, knew she was there because something had changed.
I didn’t expect her to challenge me, though.
People don’t do that. Nobody stands up to the Bailey Boys.
I certainly didn’t expect her to confront me with my pathetic existence, to tell me to stop wallowing in my mistakes. To man the fuck up, as Dean would have put it.
Maybe I misread the signs, mistook that fire in her manner for something else. When I told her what Jess used to say, about not just living a life but living it well, I thought... That look in her eye... It was a kind of seize the moment thing, the look, the way we were standing so close, the way that pause just hung in the air between us, waiting to be filled.
Her lips were so soft.
I don’t know how many women I’ve kissed but never like that.
Never so hesitant, like a fucking schoolboy with his first kiss.
Hell, even when I was a teenager I’d never been so nervous about a freaking kiss. I was always in control – the man – even then.
I put my hand to her jaw, the side of her head, drew her in harder, tried to fucking own that kiss after such a tentative start.
She pulled away.
Like a frightened rabbit. A jerk of the body, snatching her head back. Stumbling backward, clutching at the wall. A flash of shock and then anger on her face.
I’d fucked up.
I’d fucked up big time.
I moved away, turned to go but then hesitated, looked back.
“I–”
“I–”
Fuck it.
She pushed away from the wall, took the top step, clearly wanting only to get as far away from me as possible.
I went to the other staircase and headed up, as she headed down.
I reached the attic room, stepped inside and shut the door behind me before leaning back against it, wondering why I felt sick, why I felt like this at all. Wondering how I’d let a complete stranger walk into my home and get under my skin in a way that nobody had ever done before.
§
Twenty-four hours can really fuck you up, can’t they?
Twenty-four hours. Well, maybe a bit longer if you count that call from Reuben as the starting point. Call it thirty-six.
The conversation with Reuben.
The sleepless night, disturbed by that exchange, by the memories it had stirred, by the strength of the call to the man I’d used to be.
The wet and windy walk the next morning, all these thoughts churning over in my head.
That thing with Maggie. Whatever kind of thing it was. I don’t know if I found the intimacy of the lunch more unsettling than the kiss and its aftershocks.
Later that afternoon I watched her leave. She looked tiny on the cliff path, her coat pulled tight around her slight frame, head bowed against the wind.
I don’t know what I felt, watching her go. A mix of things. Of relief that I had my sanctuary to myself. An unfamiliar torment, that she was leaving with everything that had passed today still unresolved. Curiosity – that surprised me – a sense of realizing how little I knew about her and wanting to know more. I knew her looks and the way she moved; that upbeat manner, and more than anything the spirit of a person who never shied away from the world and its challenges.
All these things about her that I knew, they were things of the present, of the now. I didn’t know anything of her past, beyond that she was some kind of relative of Tomasz the builder, and what little she had told me of her family that day – the loss of her parents, the traveling brother. I knew nothing of her ambitions and dreams, of why she had come to Britain, what she hoped to make of her life.
I wanted to find out about these things, though.
Maybe that was the point at which I realized I was falling for her, for the woman I was starting to discover.
Is that how it happens? You see glimpses, slivers of the true person, and they hook you in. Then, as you find out more you either continue falling or you turn away.
It was screwing with my head.
I hated it. Feeling that way. The loss of control. I didn’t want it. I wanted my life back, the desolate life I had crafted for myself here. I didn’t want to be curious about another person. I didn’t want to care.
Nothing good could come of it.
8
Another disturbed night. And then... if it had screwed with my head the day before, when she didn’t show up at the usual time the next morning that was a whole new level of screwed.
Had I driven her away?
Was she just going to vanish without explanation? Not that I needed any explanation. I knew what had happened. I knew who was to blame.
When I realized I’d been standing at the attic window for half an hour, watching for her slight figure on the cliff path, I forced myself to turn away.
I couldn’t let myself be like this.
She would show up or she would not.
If she did, then fine, we would find a way to move past what had happened the day before.
And if not? I could do nothing. I didn’t know where she lived. I had no easy means of tracing her.
There was nothing I could do.
To stop myself waiting, I pulled on a coat and headed out again. I would walk, take the path to the west so there would be no awkward encounter with Maggie if she was rushing here late from Tidingham.
The day was an improvement on the one before, but the wind off the North Sea was still stiff and icy. Someone had once told me the locals called it a ‘lazy wind’ when it came off the sea – too lazy to go around you, it just goes right through you instead. This morning it was a lazy wind indeed.
As I walked, a flock of a dozen or so linnets flitted about the gorse bushes that lined the path here. I’d made an effort to learn about my surroundings when I came here. The linnets and the skylarks along the clifftop fields; the fossils exposed where the tide ate away at the soft cliffs; the seals that gathered out on the mudflats, the slender common seals and the bulkier, heavy-headed grays.
I almost missed the call that took an already turbulent twenty-four hours or so and tipped them on their head. The vibration of my cellphone was lost deep in my coat pocket and its ringtone tugged away on that lazy wind.
I heard it though, just, and fished the thing from my pocket.
When I looked at the screen I stopped in my tracks.
Jess.
I assumed the worst immediately. Dean’s girlfriend had no reason to call me unless something bad had happened. We’d always been on uneasy terms. For the longest time she was convinced I’d had something to do with the death of her parents, and even now I wasn’t sure if doubts still lingered.
That had been my fault, of course: I’d known more than I’d let on at first, trying to protect her from the shitstorm that was the life of anyone who got involved with the Bailey Boys.
I could only have stared at the screen for a second or so, but it felt longer, as these thoughts cascaded through my head.