by Alex Morgan
She sighed. “Just an hour or so then.” It felt as if she was being sucked into a deep, dark hole. “Who was the other visitor?”
“That was a strange one.”
“How so?”
“A little girl with blonde bunches and too much eye make-up just appeared at the kitchen door. I don’t know how I didn’t see her coming up the garden, because I was standing at the window washing last night’s dishes.”
“Sanders. Probably came down the side path.”
“Sanders?”
“It’s a diminutive of Sandra,” Paula said quickly. “What did she want?”
“She seemed to think you’d made some kind of arrangement to go out for the day.”
“Bugger.” Paula bit her lip. “I completely forgot.”
“When I said you hadn’t mentioned it, she handed me that.” He pointed to a carrier bag lying on the worktop. “Then she turned tail and scuttled down the garden without another word.”
Paula stretched over and checked inside the bag: a box of sandwiches, two bags of crisps and a couple of Mars Bars.
“She’ll be furious with me for forgetting.” It felt odd referring to Sanders as she. “I’ll have to find her and apologise.”
“What were you going on a picnic with a kid for anyway?”
“She’s sort of adopted me. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.” She picked up the cafetière. “More coffee?”
“So why did you just vanish like that?” Ollie turned to look at her. “Couldn’t you have talked to me if it was all getting too much?”
She’d wondered how long it would take him to ask the question. They were walking hand-in-hand along the beach beyond the harbour. When he took her hand, her instinct had still been to pull away, but she stopped herself. She breathed deeply, forcing herself to relax into the familiarity of his touch.
“I couldn’t. I didn’t want to talk – not to anyone. I just had to get away,” she said slowly.
She saw herself back in the van with Andy. His remark about her running away had made her question whether she was running from something or to it. She still didn’t know. She wondered if he had thought much about her since their night together.
“Can you talk to me now?”
She pushed the image of Andy away and tried to find some words for Ollie. “After the funeral, I …” She stopped walking and looked out into the bay. It was full of yachts. She wished she was on one of them, sailing away from all this – from Ollie and everyone else she knew, from this conversation, these emotions. “Seeing Mum and Dad, seeing you, knowing we were all thinking and feeling the same things made it all too real, too overwhelming. I had to escape, to be somewhere where I was the only one who knew. I thought it would make it more manageable.”
“Has it?” he asked tenderly.
“Not really. I’m falling apart.”
He put his arm around her and she leant into him.
“But why all the secrecy?” he asked.
“Because Mum and Dad would have tried to talk me out of it. They wouldn’t have wanted me to go. I feel bad about leaving them, but they’ve got each other.”
“You could have told me.”
She managed a faint smile. “You would have wanted to come with me, and when I said no, you’d just have followed me. You’re here now aren’t you?”
“Fair point.”
As they turned to start walking again, she caught sight of Sanders and Bovis wandering along the edge of the dunes. Sanders was back in his usual uniform of cut-off jeans and a T-shirt. She watched him bend down, pick up a piece of driftwood and throw it for Bovis to retrieve.
“Sanders!” she called.
He didn’t appear to hear. She pulled away from Ollie and ran towards him.
Ollie caught up in a few strides. Putting a hand on her shoulder, he tugged her to a halt. “That’s not the girl who came round this morning.”
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s a boy.”
“I know. I need to speak to him.”
“Sanders!” Paula called again.
This time he looked round. When he saw her, he took hold of Bovis’s collar and started to trot in the opposite direction.
“Wait, please,” she shouted. “I’m sorry.”
“You always say that,” he yelled without breaking stride.
“Sanders, hang on. Let me talk to you properly. I’m really sorry I forgot we were going out. I want to make it up to you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he called over his shoulder. “I can manage on my own.”
Paula made to follow him, but Ollie held her back. “Leave it. He doesn’t want to speak to you.”
She raked a hand through her hair. “I always seem to let him down.”
“Who is he anyway?”
“He’s the girl who came round this morning.”
“That’s crazy.”
“I know.” Paula turned and began walking back the way they had come, forcing Ollie to follow her. The wind snapped tendrils of hair across her face.
“And?” he asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it just now.”
After a few minutes’ silence, Ollie said, “Why Craskferry?”
At least that was easy to explain. “It’s where we came that summer you and Pete went to France. It was the only time we were apart, the only place with no memories of him. But …” She paused. “That’s not the only reason I came.”
Paula stopped walking and turned to face the wind once more. Ollie waited for her to continue.
“I think I was meant to. I don’t know why yet, but I’ve been having strange dreams.”
“What about?”
“Myself as a little girl, running along the beach here with a kite.”
Ollie slid his arm through hers and steered her round so they could carry on walking. “Sounds like maybe your subconscious is trying to take you back to a happier time.”
“I thought that at first too, but there’s more. I’m there as a grown up, watching myself, you know, as a kid.” Paula shook her head. “Sorry, I’m not explaining this well. Things are weird, wrong … menacing.” She wrapped her arms around her torso. “First I was drowning in horrible black oil and then there was this man – it was all really creepy.”
“I’m not surprised you’re having strange dreams. Look what we’re going through.”
“But you’re not dreaming weird stuff.”
Ollie gave her arm a squeeze. “Everyone deals with things differently. They’re just dreams.”
“But they’re not,” Paula persisted. “They mean something. I know they do.”
“Babe, maybe you’re just reading things into them because you’re upset.”
Paula chewed at the ragged edge of a fingernail. “I’m not imagining this because I’m upset, Ollie. Please believe me. They’re so vivid. I think there’s something about this place – something that happened here maybe – that I need to know, understand, remember … I don’t know what. I’ve no idea what it is or why it matters so much, I just know it does.” She was nearly crying now.
He squeezed her arm again. “Okay, babe, okay. Everything’s going to be fine.”
Sushi and sausages
Ollie suggested they walk back via the Co-op and get some wine for the barbecue, but neither of them had any money. When they got to the flat, Paula asked if he would mind going for the booze on his own. She had to check her work email. It was a lie, but she needed to be alone.
She put on some music and curled up on the sofa. “Pete?” she asked softly. “You wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss my dreams. You understood me. Why can’t Ollie? He used to, or at least I thought he did. I know he cares desperately, but sometimes we don’t seem to be on the same wavelength at all.”
After a few minutes there was a knock on the front door. Ollie, nose to the etched glass, was holding up two carrier bags.
“That was quick,” she said, only just concealing her annoyance.
“I got two bottles of South African pinotage and a couple of chilled whites – a chardonnay and a sauvignon blanc – in case you wanted to open one now. It might help get us in the mood for socialising.”
She took the bags from him. “Let’s crack open the sauvignon.”
Nora answered the front door. “Hi, I’m so glad you could come.” She kissed Paula on the cheek, politely ignoring the fact that they were half-an-hour late.
“It was really nice of you to ask us,” Paula managed. She had put their arrival off as long as she dared. “This is Ollie.”
Nora and Ollie shook hands. He held out a carrier containing the two bottles of red and the remaining white. “Alcohol, as instructed.”
“Wonderful. Come in and meet everyone.”
As she led them through the house and out to the garden, Paula said, “I wish you’d explained Terry was your husband and not another dog. You didn’t really tell him what I said, did you?”
Nora grinned. “I couldn’t resist it. He thought it was funny.”
On the patio, a stocky man of about forty wearing a stripped butcher’s apron was turning sausages and vegetable kebabs on a huge gas barbecue.
“Not everyone appreciates my wife’s sense of humour,” he said, laying down his tongs. He shook Paula’s hand. “Terry One, village taxi driver and honorary dog.”
Four other people were standing a few feet away, chatting and drinking. Paula recognised the men: Adrian Linton, who owned the greengrocers-cum-health food shop, and the guy from the chippie. She hadn’t seen the women before.
Nora said, “I’m sure you know Adrian. No one can stay in Cra’frae for long without finding themselves in his wonderful shop.”
Adrian nodded to them both. “Good to see you.”
“And this is Felice Beato,” Nora went on. “He feeds us all when we want a break from our own cooking.”
“I know,” Paula said. “We met the day after I arrived.”
Felice studied her for a moment. “So we did. I was disappointed you didnae come back for one of my deep-fried Mars Bars.” He sounded far less Italian away from the shop.
Nora put her hand on the arm of an Oriental woman standing next to him. “This is Kyoko, Felice’s better half. As you’re about to discover, she makes the best sushi on the planet, but we don’t tell the holidaymakers about that.”
Kyoko grinned. “Local sushi for local people. We hide it through the back of the shop – you need a password to buy it.”
Adrian leaned forward conspiratorially. “It’s whelk, by the way.”
Kyoko punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Shhh, whelk’s next week’s password.”
“You’d never make a secret agent, Adrian,” the other woman teased.
“This is Carole,” Nora said. “Sanders’ mum.”
Paula struggled to hide her surprise. Sanders had said she was nearly twenty-nine, which would make her not quite seventeen when she had him, but she looked barely that now – and far too healthy to have been a drug addict. She was very slim, with the clear, pale skin and build of a pre-pubescent girl.
“You know Sanders?” she asked.
Paula wasn’t sure how to respond. He clearly hadn’t mentioned her to his mum. She wondered where he had said he was going all the times they had spent the day together. “We met on the beach. He’s a very entertaining boy.”
Carole’s smile was almost a grimace. “He’s certainly that.”
“Right then,” Nora said. “Who needs a top up? Paula, Ollie, what’ll you have? Red or white? Or there’s plenty of beer in the fridge.”
Kyoko arranged several platters of sushi on a long wrought iron table beside the barbecue, while Nora poured the drinks. They began to eat.
“This is fabulous,” Ollie said.
Kyoko grinned. “My talents are wasted on these country bumpkins, but what can I do? They couldn’t manage without me.”
“Who would cut our hair, for a start?” Carole put in.
“You’re a hairdresser?” Paula asked.
Kyoko nodded. “At a salon in Westwick, but in a former life I worked in London. That’s where Felice and I met. He came in one day for a haircut, stinking of fried fish. I introduced him to sushi – far less smelly – and the next thing I knew we were married and moving here.”
“But why Craskferry?” Ollie asked.
“That’s my fault,” Felice said. “I wanted to live in Scotland – one o’ my grannies was from Glasgow.”
“We found an advert for the shop on the internet,” Kyoko continued. “And the rest is history.”
Her husband tweaked her earlobe. “You love it here.”
“Sad but true. I couldn’t go back to the big smoke now.”
“I’ve never lived in a city and I know I couldn’t do it,” Nora observed, helping herself to more tuna. “All that stress and pollution.”
“That’s not all there is to city life,” Ollie countered. “What about the pubs and nightclubs, the art galleries and the theatres?”
“You haven’t been to the Steam Packet yet?” Adrian’s face was deadpan.
Ollie gave him a puzzled look.
Nora giggled. “It’s our local. Actually, it’s not bad. KT Tunstall used to play there before she got famous. And if we want art and museums and theatre, Edinburgh’s not that far.”
“Nora and I were born in Cra’frae,” Terry said. “We’ve never lived anywhere else. We’re country bumpkins and proud of it.”
“What about you?” Ollie addressed Adrian. “Are you a native?”
“I’m a refugee from Edinburgh,” Adrian responded. “As cities go, it’s beautiful, but I’d far rather be here.”
“And you?” Ollie said to Carole. “Another refugee or a born bumpkin?”
“Bumpkin through and through,” Carole replied. “I’ve always lived here.”
Terry got up to check the sausages, and Nora went to get the salad and more drinks. Ollie followed her inside.
“Is this a permanent move for you two, Paula?” Felice asked. “Ollie doesnae sound all that convinced about country life.”
“It might be permanent for me. I don’t know yet. Ollie’s just visiting.”
He emerged from the kitchen holding a fresh beer and a basket of garlic bread. “Are you taking my name in vain?” he asked cheerfully.
Before Paula could respond, Felice said, “Paula was just saying she hasnae decided yet if she’s staying for good.”
“I thought this was just a holiday.” Ollie’s tone was casual but she saw the shock in his eyes.
“I … I don’t know,” she said lamely.
No one spoke for a moment. Felice caught Paula’s eye as Terry passed round sausages and vegetable kebabs. He whispered “sorry”. She smiled weakly.
The conversation moved on. Reaching across the table for some bread, Paula realised that Carole seemed to be watching her. She smiled at her, but the other woman looked away and began chatting to Adrian.
Nora topped up Paula’s glass. “Anyone else for more alcohol?” she asked. “Terry, are there any sausages left?”
Ollie drained his beer. “I’ll get another, if you don’t mind.” He stumbled slightly as he stood up. “Time I invested in a smaller pair of feet.”
Terry shared out the last of the sausages and kebabs, and they began to talk about holidays.
“Wouldn’t it be nice, just once,” Kyoko said, “to be able to go away in summer like everyone else?”
“Dream on,” Adrian said. “It’s holidaymakers who pay our mortgages. We can’t go anywhere until they’ve all gone home.”
“What do you do, Carole?” Ollie asked.
“I do a bit of cleaning in one of the big B&Bs.”
“Aye,” Felice said, “we spend our entire lives feeding holidaymakers, cleaning up after them and driving them around.”
“It’s not that bad,” Kyoko said. “We’re off to Naples over Christmas to introduce Mitsuko to Felice’s family. Mitsuko’s our daughter. She�
�s six months old,” she added for Paula and Ollie’s benefit. “Then I’m taking her to see my lot in Japan for a couple of weeks in February.”
“Do you have kids?” Ollie asked Nora.
“No kids,” she said, “just dogs.”
“Don’t you want any?” he persevered.
Nora looked uncomfortable. “More wine anyone?”
“I said, don’t you want them?” Ollie repeated.
“We can’t,” Terry said. “I’m firing blanks. We’ve tried everything, IVF, the lot – nothing’s worked.”
Paula kicked Ollie under the table. “I came here once for my holidays when I was little,” she offered. “I was nine.”
“You mentioned spending the summer here the day we met,” Nora said, obviously glad of the change of subject. “Did you rent a house?”
“We did,” Paula said, “but I can’t remember where. The only clear memories I have are of being on the beach. Donkey rides, kite flying, that sort of thing.”
Ollie went into the kitchen and returned with another beer.
“Excuse me.” The metal feet on Carole’s chair made a screeching noise on the flagstones as she stood up. “I have to …”
“Use the upstairs one,” Nora said. “Downstairs is being temperamental again.”
Carole went inside and everyone else carried on chatting.
After a while, Felice noticed that Carole hadn’t come back.
“She was looking a bit peaky,” Kyoko said. “I hope she’s not ill.”
Adrian made to get up.
“Stay where you are,” Nora said. “I’ll see if she’s okay.”
She returned a couple of minutes later. “There’s no sign of her and her jacket’s gone.”
Near death
“Paula, you’re being utterly ridiculous. You just admitted you brought the tandem with you, so you must have been planning to use it, and you told me yesterday about all the trips you’ve made on your solo.” Ollie tugged at the top of his hair, the way he often did when he was frustrated. “I’ve got a pair of cycling shoes in the car. So, what’s the problem? Why can’t we go out for a ride? It’s what we need to clear our heads.”