One Night on the Island(33)

‘Must be all that knitting.’

‘Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,’ she says.

I don’t think I will, somehow.

I think of my sons as I lie in the dark. Leo’s bony fingers, Nate’s scraped knees.

‘One – being a dad is the most important thing I am,’ I say into the silence. ‘Two – my relationship with my own dad is pretty complicated. A story for another time. And three …’ I cast around for a third thing to add to my list. I’m not really sure how our conversations in the dark became a ritual, but it’s strangely soothing. I’ve found myself thinking about them during the day, the things Cleo has told me, the things I’ve chosen to reveal about myself, the small puzzle pieces that add up to a whole person. ‘I don’t like peanut butter.’ Yeah, I’m aware it’s a lame finish, but I really couldn’t think of anything else.

‘Me neither,’ Cleo says. ‘Crunchy, lumpy sandwich spread is weird.’

Left to his own devices, Nate would stand in the kitchen and eat an entire jar with a spoon. There are people with a sweet tooth, and then there’s my youngest son, who could mainline sugar until his eyeballs spun if no one stopped him. He’s the kind of kid who goes at everything full speed, the kind of kid I probably was until life handed me a few sharp lessons on the benefits of staying cautious.

‘My first ever job was in a fish-and-chip shop at the weekend.’ Cleo picks up her three-things cue. ‘I spent my Saturday nights battering haddock while my mates were trying to get served in the pub.’ She pauses. ‘Two – I’m the only woman in my family with dark hair, the others are all blonde.’ I hear her breathe out in the darkness. ‘Three – I lost my virginity when I was seventeen … to the English teacher.’

‘You know I need to hear the rest of that story.’

‘He was temporary, a standin while our regular teacher had surgery. I walked into his lesson and felt as if someone had set me on fire. God, did I bust a gut to impress him that summer. I agonized over every word of my essays, imagining him reading them and falling in love with me through the pages.’

‘And did he?’

‘Oh, he noticed me all right. Within a fortnight we were steaming up the windows of his bashed Mini and doing things in school store cupboards that they definitely weren’t designed for.’ She laughs. ‘It’s not as terribly predatory as it sounds; he was twenty-three and wet behind the ears and I was almost eighteen and no wallflower waiting to be picked.’

‘At least you didn’t lose your virginity to the hot tub salesman,’ I say, to make her laugh. ‘Did you and the teacher get found out and run away together like Bonnie and Clyde?’

She sighs. ‘Nothing so romantic. His stint at the school came to an end after a few weeks and our affair ended with it.’

‘Your poor teenage broken heart,’ I say.

She shifts on the sofa and sighs into her pillow. ‘He didn’t break it, really. Someone else did that. A story for another time.’





Cleo





14 October


Salvation Island


SINGLE LADIES, I’M BEYONCé


‘Heya,’ Delta says, looking up from her magazine as I approach the café counter. She’s wearing denim dungarees over a white T-shirt and her dark hair is held off her face with a sequinned cherry-red hairslide, her baby bump up front and central.

I pull off my woollen gloves and flex my cold fingers. ‘Hello, yourself,’ I say, pleased to see her again. ‘I’m badly in need of hot coffee.’

‘And cake?’ She nods towards a glass cake stand. ‘Erin made it. She’s Salvation’s answer to Nigella Lawson.’

I pull Erin up in my head. Tall, freckles, athletic doctor’s wife with a sweet tooth. The kind of woman who looks as if she’d be good at anything she tries her hand at, whether it’s baking or brain surgery.

‘It’s coconut and raspberry jam,’ Delta says. ‘You’d be doing me a favour. The baby has insisted on way too many slices.’ She pats her belly.

‘Go on then,’ I say.

‘Two slices?’ She sly-eyes me. ‘Take one back for Han Solo?’

‘Just the one will do nicely.’ I soften my eye-roll with a smile. ‘You’re wasted here, you could make your fortune as a saleswoman over on the mainland.’

Delta screws her nose up as she pushes coffee and a huge slab of cake towards me. ‘Nah. Been there, done that. Give me the quiet life any day, especially now this one’s on the way.’

‘Really?’ I say. I’d assumed that she’d come back to the island as a temporary measure. She has a cart-wheeling kind of energy about her, something in her startling green eyes that suggests wanderlust and adventure.

Delta glances around the warm, quiet café.

‘I came in here with my mother every Saturday when I was a kid. The woman who used to own it was a terrible cook, only ever baked jam tarts. Burnt them sometimes, as well.’ Delta shrugs. ‘It was the coming here that counted – me and Mam always walked the long way to collect shells.’

I find it hard to imagine Dolores as a carefree young woman beachcombing with her small daughter.