She was so aware of his hand on her mid-back, she could discern that most of the pressure came from his baby finger, and the next two. Was she really going to know what it would be like to kiss him, later? They stopped ribbing each other now and just listened to Roy doing his thing. The lyrics were making her suddenly reflective. She concentrated on the juddering intensity of the tune, and the intoxicating nearness of her body to a man’s: a man she found heart-stoppingly exciting. She allowed herself to dwell on it for a moment, to pay a sort of homage to it. Once in a while, he placed his cheek to hers, briefly, just lay it there before removing it. Come back, cheek! Her hand was perspiring in his; she was vaguely self-conscious about it. They stayed like this, close and quiet, letting Roy carry them away with their own private thoughts. She was turning melancholy and she didn’t know why. He could be Gregory Peck. Or Laurence Olivier. Anthony Quinn or Henry Fonda. In his arms, she was Lois Maxwell or Julie Christie. Never had she been so aware of a man’s physical presence, the feeling of her fingers curved over his semi-cupped hand. How could you be so affected by a hand? Roy was singing about waking from his dream and finding her gone, his voice becoming its characteristic falsetto; Evelyn was bereft now. Inexplicably. In exactly one week, she’d be gone – to a whole new life. She didn’t intend to think of this; she supposed she was just silently taking stock of things.
I’m leaving, she thought, blank with the irony of it. I have a job lined up, and a flat-share. This has always been my dream.
Why am I leaving, again? Someone tell me . . .
Roy’s words about how some things can only happen in dreams were almost too much. She tightened her grip on his hand, squeezing, and closing her eyes. Eddy responded by stroking the side of her finger with his thumb.
‘You know, I think you might be warming to me.’ His breath caressed her ear.
‘Whatever gave you that false impression?’
The sound of his lovely laugh reverberated in her heart. Sometimes, it struck her how she was always aching for things not yet gone.
‘You’re too much of a challenge for me, Evelyn. What am I to do with you?’ His hand made a short foray to the crest of her bottom – accidentally, by the swiftness with which he corrected it.
She knew what she wanted him to do with her.
She could smell the powdery scent of his aftershave, and detect his shoulder muscles shifting through his clothes. She wanted him to kiss her almost more than she wanted to see old age. There was a naturalness in the way they went together. It had been there from the first second. This was what made it sadder.
She’d leave, and somebody else would get him. The thought – the bare injustice of it – just sailed through her head, and it astonished her how much it upset her.
She met up with Elizabeth in the toilets.
‘You lucky duck,’ Elizabeth said.
‘I’m not feeling lucky. In fact, unlucky would probably be the word.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Tell him I’m moving to London soon. Then go home with you, as planned.’
‘I thought he had a girlfriend. I think he might have just broken up with her, maybe.’ Elizabeth looked confused. Elizabeth was never far wrong.
If she had met him at any other time, she’d have brooded on this idea. As it was, she just thought, Then this isn’t to be taken too seriously. He’s on the rebound. It would be doomed, anyway.
‘I’ll see you home,’ he told her, later, when they had stepped outside, after his mortifying song. They had sat on two peeling, white-painted, wooden chairs and talked – talked for hours – while she unconsciously denuded the chairs of paint.
She peered to see her watch. The music had ceased ages ago. Most of the guests, bar a few drunken stragglers, were long gone.
‘I’ve only had two beers. I think you can trust me not to kill you.’
She trusted him, anyway. Next, they were bulleting across the causeway in his car. She wound the window down. Strands of her hair danced against her cheek. The sand was slowly weighting with pools of seawater. Very soon it would be unwise for him to cross back. The sun was just coming up, and she didn’t want to let him go. Seals were singing on the sandbanks, puncturing the tonelessness of the morning. ‘I’m missing you already and I haven’t even said goodnight to you yet,’ he said, and snuffled a small laugh.
She didn’t answer, just processed the scope of what he’d said as she distantly listened to the language of larks rising on the morning air. He had taken hold of her hand.
‘When can I see you again?’ he asked, when they arrived at her door. He had got out of the car and come around to her side. ‘I mean, I assume I’m going to get to take you out on a proper date?’ He didn’t even say it like it was a question.
She had a feeling that everything about her life was going to be decided if she answered yes. And it was a glorious feeling. She was open to the recklessness of it – was sailing with it as though this were a new and enchanted form of travel. And yet . . .
He was already kissing her.
They must have kissed for ten minutes. Or perhaps it was two. When he stopped, she was dizzy. She was even more certain, and even more confused. ‘If you don’t go now, you won’t be going at all,’ she warned. Soon, the sea would fold around the island, wrapping up the locals in their own little world for those isolating few hours, dispassionately curbing an element of your free will. This occurrence of Northumberland nature would always sink Evelyn into the doldrums because she didn’t yet know the extent to which she was going to miss it.
‘And that will be just perfectly fine by me.’ He appeared in no hurry to go.
Looking out to the causeway, the increasing swell of grey seawater was now bathing the feet of a heron who was standing, blinking, in the sand.
‘Hanging around one moment longer is a very bad idea,’ she said, thinking, Will I see him again, or won’t I? Fate is going to have to decide.
Still he didn’t make any attempt to move. ‘Friday at seven o’clock?’ he asked. ‘I’ll come right here for you.’ He glanced up at their house, seeming curious and charmed by the place where she lived.
She found herself nodding, wordlessly.
‘I take it that’s a yes, then,’ he called after her, playfully.
She began walking to her front door. When she got there, she turned and looked at him again. He was getting back into his car. She watched him roll down the window.
‘If I get stuck, will you come rescue me?’
‘No!’ She chuckled, and parroted his words from earlier. ‘Go on, Eddy, live dangerously!’
He beamed a smile at her, then two seconds later he sped off. As she pushed open the door, she paused for the briefest of moments and listened to his engine burn a path through the silence.