Page 82 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

So she smiles as she ushers him out; races through the rest of her appointments. And finally, just as she’s going to call her daughter, the phone rings. She grabs it in relief. But it’s not Essie. It’s him.

*

It takes a long time for Essie to leave the house. She reads the messages. Connor is going home early, is the gist. He doesn’t say come. He just says he’s had enough and he’s going home. She feels so trembly and upset inside and doesn’t know what to do. She should call Al, but he’s still furious about yesterday.

Everyone has gone.

The early sea mist is rising. The haar muffles the sound of the town, the tolling of the harbour bell, the chugging of the fishing boats, the shouts of the men, their boots stomping on the cobbles, as they head off to the tiny airport to take Gavin’s helicopter out to the rigs – Brent Spar, North Cormorant, Ninian Central – for eight weeks of solid toil in punishing conditions before they get back to dry land, swaying slightly to steady themselves.

She doesn’t even know where she’s going. Where is there to go? Nobody wants her.

The very first ray of watery sun comes out just as she leaves the house, looks at the row of Seagate cottages. They look a mess, but they aren’t: they’re her mess. Done to her spreadsheet,to her timetable, they had stopped Wee Jim banging stuff with a hammer and got him and his mate, the diver, to work on the pipes, installed long ago and never used. It’s kind of amazing: outside are three toilets, ready to be connected, under swaths of plastic. There’ll be a boiler too, shiny and new. Everything going in in order, just how it should be, beautiful inexpensive pieces of kit, chosen by her, with Dwight’s input. The houses are going to be lovely. One day. Assuming they don’t get immediately sold off by some dodgy scheme of Tris’s. Or even, she concedes reluctantly, if they do.

Dwight is leaning over the garden gate, with his stupid hat on, not waving, or talking. No toothpick. No Wee Jim. Just Dwight, standing in the frame, watching her pass by.

‘Morning, ma’am,’ he says, and picks the hat up again.

‘Dwight,’ she says, still embarrassed about the day before.

‘Well, thanks for introducing me to those city folks,’ he says, surprisingly. ‘Tris is going to look after all of this for me. The money, the deeds, everything.’

Her heart sinks. She’s so conflicted. Is it a good thing? She thinks of herself, unable to find anywhere to rent; Johnson and Lish’s daughter, about to have a baby and living in a converted shed in the grounds of their own house. The closed-down restaurants in this town. The way life is getting harder. Everything she’s noticed since she got back. But then again, look at Dwight getting his chance. There’s only so long he can live on the rigs; a drilling hole costs the bodies of its men, everyone knows that.

‘I’m not sure . . . I mean, you don’t have to do this.’

‘But I’ll have enough to buy a new car,’ says Dwight. ‘And more houses, then I can do it again, and grow it all. And look how good we are. As a team. We can do it together. With the money from Tris . . . we could go and get more, it’ll be great.’

‘But . . . what if it goes out of the village and nobody has a place to live?’

Dwight raises up his hands.

‘I have had nothing,’ he says. ‘Oh, yeah, it was okay for you, going off to the big city. You forgot about those of us who were left behind. Come back sniffing like there’s cow pats everywhere, making judgements about the rest of us.’

‘I do not do that!’

He looks at her with an ‘oh, come on!’ face, and she feels more furious than ever.

‘Anyway we’re not talking about me!’

‘Yes, we are! You and those guys and everyone like you who think it’s fine to come when it suits you! Who never thinks that the rest of us are here, trying to get by, leading decent lives but feeling like we have to feed off crumbs from the big table.’ He breaks off and turns round. ‘And you’ll be off again soon enough out of this dive, and forget you had a sudden crisis of conscience when you’re back with all your posh friends at New Town dinner tables and you remember it’s the government that didn’t build enough hooses, not me.’

They are both breathing heavily and Essie can feel her cheeks go very pink.

‘You don’t know how I think,’ she says.

Suddenly he is standing in front of her. She has not realised, until now, that although he is not tall, they are exactly the same height, and face to face she is level with every inch of him; his body is as tight and strong as she had always thought, now punishingly close.

‘What do you think?’ he says, gruffly, and she realises that, for the first time in so, so long, she isn’t thinking of anything at all; her entire mind has gone blank, and she is confused and excited and overwhelmed, and before she knows anything at allhe is kissing her, hard and fiercely, completely out of the blue, in broad daylight.

*

After a moment she breaks away and steps back. It has been a very surprising morning.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Dwight, not sounding remotely sorry at all. ‘I apologise. I should have asked.’

Essie just stares at him, furious at her betraying, racing heart.

Then she moves closer to him, and she does not just let him; she welcomes him, pushes herself against him, and what she had dreamed of, if she had let herself realise it, or given in to it, she finally has: his tight chest, his narrowed, bright blue eyes, the long hair. The toothpick is gone. It’s just him. He smells of fresh sweat and leather, and suddenly, like a roaring train, Essie forgets everything: the problems, her life, her boyfriend; everything is completely gone. There is nothing in her at all except an intense animal yearning, a strength of extraordinary desire she has never felt before, that feels both overwhelming and completely inevitable.

---