“They have room service?”
“Not normally,” said Flora, thinking privately that Inge-Britt might prove amenable in this case. “Maybe if you asked nicely.”
“I always ask nicely!”
She gave him a look and he was taken aback.
“Well, for New York,” he admitted grudgingly.
Flora poured him a cup, sweet and hot. He took it appreciatively, and even said thank you, and they sat on the harbor wall and looked at the low-rising sun.
“I can nearly see it, you know,” Joel said, gazing at the horizon. “I can see what Colton sees in this place. It’s like . . . it’s not like anywhere else.”
The haar had lifted now, and the colors of the dawn were fading in and out of the clouds, giving a striped effect to the water, stippled pink and gold and yellow beneath the eerie white sky.
“It’s not,” agreed Flora.
“You look at home here.”
Flora shrugged.
“Well. I’m not. Look. The project . . .”
“I know it’s irregular,” said Joel.
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“I was thinking . . . Did you read my notes?”
“No,” said Flora. “I was asleep. Do you never sleep? Are you Batman?”
A thought struck her.
“That would explain a lot.”
Joel smiled.
“Really?”
“I didn’t read your notes.”
“Well,” said Joel. “Basically, this is a PR job. If you could organize something like—say—a pop-up shop in that pink building. Get local people on his side. Plus the party. Plus selling your cheese or whatever the hell it is that Fintan wants to do. I mean, that would swing it, wouldn’t it? Convince people that he’s got the best interests of the island at heart. Then it goes our way. Then we take millions of dollars from his future business. I’m being frank with you here.”
“I see that,” said Flora. She sighed. “But I have a job! A proper one, not running a shop.”
“That is a proper job,” said Joel. “And also, I have a load of paralegals. Most of whom could handle your briefs.”
He looked out to sea.
“But I don’t know anyone else who can help out our potentially biggest client.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s only for a few weeks—when will the council decide? You can leave after that; that’s what a pop-up means. I just think it would mean a lot to the firm.”
Bramble came bounding back up, covered in salt and water.
“Come on,” said Flora. “Let’s walk the Endless.”
“The what?”
“The Endless. The beach.” She jumped off the wall. “It’s not really endless.”
Joel followed her up and over the headland at the bottom of the harbor wall, where the houses petered out. At the crest of the headland, as Bramble hopped about sniffing for rabbits, he stopped.
The beach ahead went on for miles. The sand was purest white, the pale sea gently lapping at its edge. In the light remnants of the sea fog, you couldn’t see where it ended; it faded into infinity. The world was nothing but this glorious beach, completely and utterly empty, as if nobody else had ever stood there. Bramble made paw prints in the virgin sand.
It was a combination of absolutely no sleep and a lack of contact with London, but for some reason, it took Joel’s breath away. As if this was the first time he’d looked up. The air felt burstingly fresh in his lungs; the smell of coffee on the salted wind; the breeze ruffling the dog’s hair. He felt . . . he didn’t know what he felt. A kind of strange freedom. Something new.
He took a step forward.
“Wow,” he said. “Jesus. It’s like . . . it’s like we’ve discovered it.”
“You have,” said Flora simply.
“It’s . . . it’s just . . .”
He was lost for words. Bramble was cavorting about, leaping high in the air and desperately snuffling around for sticks. Flora went to help him, then turned to look back at Joel, who was still transfixed. She felt strange all of a sudden; she’d been so desperate for this moment—the two of them alone, him talking to her, looking at her, for once. And yet now here he was, and she felt . . . Well. He looked suddenly small, standing on the Endless—almost humbled. She was curious about him: what kept him so locked up, so very tight? Had he lost someone too?
But those thoughts led her, once more, and always on Mure, to somewhere she didn’t want to be, to the hand to which she’d entrusted her own, the first time she’d walked the Endless and heard the stories: of Vikings, wreckers, fairies . . . all the old, old tales of the isles.
She screwed her face up. She was so tired of it, running through her head over and over again. So weary.
Bending over, she found a stick on the ground, the perfect size for throwing. Kicking off her boots and rolling up her jeans, she hurled it as far as she could, then, in the bright clear air of the everlasting morning, ran as fast as she could, side by side with the dog, splashing through the gentle waves. It was the best way she knew to get rid of her thoughts, to chase away the dreams of the night, to escape the clutches of this island and the ridiculous thing that had happened to her. Just run, and never look back.
The beach unfurled in front of her until she was far out of reach, until she could no longer hear Joel calling after her, and she and Bramble collapsed on the sand, and the dog licked her face anxiously, and she buried her face in his fur until she felt more herself again, and began to wander back along the beach, slowly, out of breath, but somehow fuller, more alive than she’d felt for some time.
“Sorry about that,” she said as she reached Joel. “Sorry. I just felt a bit of an urge . . .”
Oddly, Joel had very nearly followed her. Cast off his shoes, run as if he could outrun wolves. He’d come extremely close to trying to catch her up . . . and then grabbing her, pulling her down onto the sand, both breathless, hot, sweating . . .
He had buried the thought at once. She was a junior employee, and as far as he had a personal life at all, it was never getting remotely near work.
They looked at each other for a moment. Then Flora caught her breath and straightened up, and they set off again, more sedately now.
“It’s different in the summer. Mobbed. As teenagers we’d light fires here and get up to all sorts of mischief.”
“I bet you did.”
“What was it like where you grew up?”
There was a pause. Joel looked out over the clear water and sighed. He even considered, for a moment, telling her.
“It was . . .”
The treacherous thoughts meandered back into his head. He wondered what that cool, clear skin would feel like. The porcelain whiteness of it, the delicate freckles here and there. He wondered what look she would get in those ocean eyes.