Flora looked out at the lights popping on one by one over Manhattan – an amazing, astonishing world of amazing things out there she’d never experienced – and wanted to cry even more in frustration. Everything was out there and she was going to miss it all. Again. Because she wasn’t really Joel’s girlfriend. She’d wanted to find out and now she knew. She was just his … what. His bed and breakfast? His country retreat?
Ignoring him, she went to the minibar, and pulled out a vodka and tonic without looking at the prices. She dumped her coat on the back of a chair, pulled off her big jumper – she’d been absolutely stifling – pulled the bobble from her hair, then poured her drink and took it out on the balcony, letting the mild spring breeze blow away the plane and the cobwebs and the jet lag.
Here, even twenty floors up – or perhaps especially – she could feel the city coming at her in waves. The honking of the cabs, impossibly distant below; the setting sun slanting shadows of enormous buildings, one on top of another; the width of the bouncing boulevards and avenues all heading in the same direction, unlike the little winding paths of her home; the hundreds of lighted windows across from her. She eyed up roof gardens and balconies enviously; people out on fire escapes and terraces on such a mild night; parties and friends and lovers and the oddity of a life lived far more closely and intimately with each other than she knew back in Mure, but at the same time distinct and anonymous and different. It was the oddest feeling. And, she thought, with a strange sadness, anyone looking her way right then would just have seen a girl with pale hair standing by herself. She might have been local, might have known New York like the back of her hand, might have been coming here all her life.
Flora found she quite liked this thought and, if this was to be – and here was a thought so frightening she put it to the back of her mind – but if this was to be her first and last trip ever to New York, she vowed to enjoy it. She would go and see everything tomorrow. She had thought Joel might accompany her, or take her to places he liked, but no matter. She would visit the Empire State, and the Guggenheim, and Ellis Island and everywhere she fancied, and she would stop in nice areas and eat at places recommended on the internet and …
Well. She needed to have a plan. She had made a mistake … and one, deep down, that she thought on some level she’d been making all along. He was out of her league. She was all right for what the Scots called a ‘bidie in’ – Flora MacKenzie, sitting at home, weaving and keeping the fires burning while the man went out and did whatever it was he was going to do in the great wide world. The bigger world beyond their quiet beaches and churning tides. Out there. Without her.
She drank her drink and tried to think calmly about it. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned. By Margo. By her friends. It hadn’t been as if she hadn’t known.
Music drifted up to her from some bar or concert far below and she listened to it gently swaying on the warm wind, trying to feel, at least, in the moment; trying to salvage something in fact. She was in New York, and the stars were popping out at the purple edge of the skyscrapers and, as the tears rolled down her cheeks, she thought: Isn’t that something? Doesn’t that count for something? Maybe, one day, she could say: Well, once I listened to music at the very top of New York on a warm spring night, and I was young, or young-ish, and it was beautiful, and very, very sad … and she wondered who she might even be telling that to.
And she didn’t hear the door slide open silently behind her, and she was unaware of anything until she felt on her bare shoulders the softest kiss, the sense of his presence behind her, and she squeezed her eyes tight shut and when she opened them again he was still there, saying nothing, this time putting his arms right around her, sheltering her from the wind, holding her, and he leaned his head against her back, just laid it there. And she thought of an old story of her mother’s – of the sea sprites that came in the night, and you couldn’t look at them to break the spell, even though they were the most beautiful, the most extraordinary of all the faerie world, but you could not look at them in the day. Not until the sun had gone down could they reveal themselves, and if you could not help yourself, if you took even the faintest peek, then they would vanish for ever into the mist and you would spend the rest of your life on the lonesome road, searching for their traces in all the world up and down but never would you find them or see them again. And that weeping and wailing was the sound the wind made through the rushes at night. So, her mother had said. Do not be afraid of the noises you hear at night. But never, ever look at a faerie if you love them.
So Flora stood, frozen, staring out still, her heart a waterfall, not daring to move, barely daring to breathe as Joel held on to her as if his life depended on it, kissing her softly up her shoulder. She shivered, and, thinking she was cold, he took off his jacket and put it round her, until gradually, reluctantly, as the moon rose behind the buildings, she turned round to face him.
Chapter Eighteen
Lorna pulled out her pad and paper.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Blood test.’
‘Check,’ said Saif.
They were sitting on the harbour wall, preparing for Saif leaving, which he was doing the following week. His locum was the scattiest person either of them had ever met, so Saif was just privately hoping everyone avoided getting frightfully sick until he got back. And when he got back, well …
‘Toys?’
‘Wait and see what they like.’
‘Good call. I will tell you that as of ten past three this afternoon it was Shopkins and Fidget Spinners. Which means it’s now something else completely.’
‘I don’t understand what you just said.’
‘Oh, Saif, you are so in for a … No, it’ll be fine,’ said Lorna. ‘New clothes.’
‘Waiting to see sizes.’
He had shown Lorna two screengrabs from the videos. His original wallet, with photographs, had been lost to the sea a lifetime ago.
‘They are very handsome boys,’ said Lorna.
Saif had smiled. ‘They are.’
‘Here.’ Lorna handed over a parcel. ‘Don’t get overexcited. And I think this will just be the start of a deluge of gifts when everyone finds out.’
‘Don’t tell them,’ said Saif urgently. Lorna felt slightly uncomfortable, but didn’t say that Flora already knew.
He looked at the parcel.
‘It’s buckets and spades,’ said Lorna, indicating the Endless Beach, where the hardiest toddlers were already marching up and down busily to the waves, making dams and digging holes, despite the chill breeze. ‘They never go out of fashion. And you can’t live on Mure without them.’
Saif blinked. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He clutched the parcel. ‘They’re really coming,’ he said. ‘They’re really coming.’
‘And it’s wonderful,’ said Lorna gently.
‘I am as scared as I have ever been,’ said Saif.
Innes came by. He was walking freely and Hamish was carrying vast loads of boxes: supplies for the Seaside Kitchen. Lorna was quite impressed by the division of labour.
‘Hey!’ She waved. ‘Hey, Innes, how’s Agot?’
He grimaced. ‘She’s a fiend. Bit her entire nursery class because she doesn’t want to go to school on the mainland.’
‘Good!’ shouted back Lorna. ‘We need her for the school roll.’
Innes shook his head. ‘I’m not sure wolverines should get enrolled. Have you heard from my gallivanting sister?’
‘Nope,’ said Lorna cheerfully. ‘I’m taking that as a good sign.’
She turned back to Saif as the boys marched on. ‘And wellingtons,’ she added when they were out of earshot. ‘Don’t forget wellingtons! Buy all the wellingtons!’
Chapter Nineteen
Flora turned round to face him.
‘No more surprises.’
‘Thank you.’
They stood there, frozen.
‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said after a long pause. ‘I thought you’d want to see me.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘That’s why I want to … to get my head down, to get finished, just to work. So I can get home. That’s all I do. That’s all I care about. I thought you’d see that.’
Flora blinked. ‘But …’
‘But what?’
‘But I’m not just for … for coming back to when you’re tired of doing other stuff.’