Page 78 of Sunrise By the Sea

‘Sure,’ she said.

He opened the cap, poured the freezing liquid into two small heavy glasses, passed her one then held his up.

‘Za zdarovye!’

She smiled.

‘Za zdarovye!’

They clinked glasses.

‘No,’ said Alexei. ‘You must look me in the eye. Or is bad luck.’

She raised her chin and gazed into his brown eyes. She realised as she did so how very long it had been since she’d done just that; the curious intimacy of looking straight at somebody. It didn’t seem to bother Alexei in the slightest; he didn’t break her gaze. Not in a creepy way. He was simply – and somehow, given his upbringing – comfortable in his own skin, in being with other people. He had got out of his own way.

‘Okay,’ she said, holding his gaze.

‘And how would you say it?’

‘Salute,’ she said.

‘Salute.’

Chapter Forty-eight

Marisa wasn’t sure how much later it was, but she found she was laughing hysterically. Alexei was trying to tell her a story about something that he and his friends had done with some snow, but he had lost all his English and kept switching to German, punctuated by some fairly loud swearing at himself and had ended up trying to act the entire thing out, to Marisa’s increasingly hysterical guesses.

‘Polar bear!’

‘I am not polar bear! I am elegant . . .’

He tried to mime again.

‘Hedgehog! Fire engine! Dumper truck.’

They were both in hysterics by this time.

Alexei growled as he stumbled over one of the many lamps glowing around the little room which gave it a cosy air, against the pitch black of the view outside, flooded every thirty seconds by the lighthouse. He had also lit a small black cigarillo which smelled of cinnamon and cloves and was constantly leaving it teetering dangerously on large piles of paper.

‘You’re a fire hazard!’

‘You are fire hazard oven is off oven is on oven is off. Ssh. I thinkink.’

‘You must know!’

Marisa stared at him once more. That huge rugby player’s physique of his was not graceful in any way, but she didn’t hate it. There was something very reassuring about an intensely broad pair of shoulders, after all; a broad trunk, like a tree.

‘But!Whatare youdoing?’

He tried to glide across the room and knocked over a huge pile of old records – they weren’t even LPs, Marisa saw looking at them; they were fatter and older. Gramophone records. She picked them up, surprised at how heavy they were.

‘Be careful!’ she scolded. ‘I am not sure sport is for you.’

‘Is for everyone,’ said Alexei, hurt.

‘What is this?’ she said, holding it up. She’d seen albums before but this wasn’t the same thing at all.

His face softened.

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