That Summer He Died (35 page)

The cold of the Scottish winter would kick in and this whole hot, crazy summer in Grancombe would be consigned to memory for ever. And already – even though that time hadn’t yet come – he had regrets. He’d visited the junction, read the signs on the post: Suzie and sanity to the right; Alex and anarchy to the left. He’d gone left, almost lost himself, and only now was he able to see that he’d been wrong, that right had been the turn for him all along.

Suzie was sitting at a table in Surfers’ Turf when he reached the door. Low and mournful music – some old Portishead track – drifted through the open windows on to the evening breeze and out across the beach.

James stood motionless for a few seconds, watching through the pane of the glass door as she tapped away at a calculator and filled in columns in a book. He felt content, imagined that this was what it must be like to have children, to watch them from a distance, to study their movements without inhibition, to marvel at the good fortune that had allowed them to be a part of your life.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

‘Hi,’ she said, turning in her seat, and smiling. She looked at her watch, then held the calculator up, waggled it at him. ‘Time sure flies when you’re having fun.’

‘Finish off,’ he said, heading towards the kitchen. ‘Don’t mind me, I’ll go and fix us a coffee. Milk, sugar?’

‘No and no,’ she called back. ‘Thanks.’

He returned to the table five minutes later and set the two mugs of coffee down next to the closed accounts book.

‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his mug to his lips and sipping, letting the steam funnel over his face.

She sat back in her chair and stretched. ‘Well, I finally did it,’ she said, nudging the calculator across the table. ‘Been putting it off for weeks. I should feel pleased.’

‘But you’re not, right?’

‘No,’ she said, leaning forward and taking a drink. ‘I knew this summer was going to be make or break and now I know the result.’

It didn’t take long for him to guess which. ‘Break?’

She made a gun out of her fingers and fired it at her head. ‘You got it.’

‘So what next? Close it down till next summer and go back and work at the Moonraker till then?’

Her eyebrows lifted. ‘You’ve got a good memory.’

‘Some days you don’t forget.’

She looked puzzled, then said, ‘Of course. That was the day you guys found Jack Dawes.’

‘I wasn’t talking about that.’ He took a deep breath, then thought, what the hell? No point being here and biting his own tongue. ‘I meant you. I meant I remember that day because it was the day I met you.’

She laughed at him, hid her face behind her mug. ‘You don’t waste time, do you?’ she finally said. ‘Aren’t we still meant to be at the mild flirting stage now? You know the sort of thing. Boy meets girl. They joke around. They tell each other stories about their lives and see if they find each other interesting. They each catch the other staring, because they’re staring too. And when they do, they always look away, maybe even blush a little. Isn’t that stuff meant to come first? Before one of them comes out with a line so obvious that the other can’t ignore it without blowing the whole thing out?’

He was laughing now, as well. ‘OK, you’re right. Let’s take things back a bit. Wipe what I just said from your mind. But I still think we’ve covered the joking part, so – what was it you said came next – story-telling?’

‘Story-telling,’ said Suzie. She stared at him, didn’t look away, didn’t blush, not even a little. ‘Tell me about you and Alex and my brother. Tell me all about that.’

His smile faded.

The redhead . . . he saw her face once more.

‘In at the deep end, then?’

‘Twenty thousand leagues and counting . . .’

‘Why that? Out of all the things you could ask, why do you want to know about that?’

‘Because I’m worried about you. Because of what you said about that girl up at Eagle’s Point earlier. Because you looked so sad.’

A sickness spread through him. He couldn’t look at her now. He had to turn away.

‘You can’t blame yourself for what happened,’ she said. ‘And you can’t blame Dan and Alex either. The police let them go. It wasn’t their fault.’

‘I know. . .’

‘But?’

‘But they still deal, don’t they?’

James turned back to face her. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her that it had been Alex, it had been Dan, it had been him – that without them that girl would still be alive. He wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t. Because he was still too afraid. Because the words would not come out.

‘It could just as easily have been them who sold her the pills,’ he said weakly instead.

Suzie leant forward. ‘But it wasn’t them, was it?’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Not them.’ He breathed deeply, tried to surface, the urge to speak the truth still weighing him down. He blinked heavily. ‘But it could have been, and I guess that’s the point. It could still happen. Who knows? Maybe one day it will. And I don’t want to be there when it does. I don’t ever want to have to cope with that kind of guilt.’

‘Have you told them this?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t need to. They already know.’

‘And you don’t think you could bring them round to your point of view?’

‘No.

‘Not even Dan?’

‘No.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘It’s too late. He’s Alex’s now. For keeps.’

He watched the skin tighten around Suzie’s eyes. He wished he could tell her different. But she needed to know the truth about Dan. And the truth was he would never change.

‘He’s really pissed off at you,’ she said.

‘I know.’

‘He took it badly that you just cut him off.’

Anger flared up inside James. What fucking right did Dan have to hate him?

‘And Alex?’ he said. ‘What about him?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t talk to him.’ Still that puckering around her eyes. ‘Dan’s my brother,’ she said. ‘He’s different from Alex. Or he would be, if he ever got the chance.’ She sniffed and took a deep swig of coffee, trying to keep her emotions together. ‘And if you’d been there for him, then maybe he wouldn’t have ended up back in Alex’s pocket again. Maybe after that girl died, he would have done the same thing as you – the right thing.’

James couldn’t bear to see her looking like this, so unhappy, so hopeless. She meant that Dan too might have walked away.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll talk to him. I will.’

And meant it, even though he knew it would do him no good.

*

As Suzie took his hand then, something unspoken passed between them. She moved the conversation on and they stayed there talking over cigarettes and coffee for another hour, reading each other chapter after chapter from their lives.

He heard himself telling her about his parents, keeping nothing back. And he told her about Alan, about the way he’d become. She told him about herself, about growing up in Grancombe with Dan. She told him about how her brother had been friends with Alex since they could first talk. She told him that she wished they’d never met. They discussed the future: James going to Edinburgh, his writing, his wish to become a journalist or novelist or screenwriter or games writer. And ways to make Surfers’ Turf work, so that Suzie could then travel the world and always have something to come home to.

And then he told her about her; about what he thought of her. He told her what he’d wanted to tell her from the first day he’d met her.

‘Come here,’ she said, getting to her feet and walking round to his side of the table.

He stood and she took his hand, and leant forward and pressed her lips against his.

‘You’re a good kisser, you know,’ she told him.

Without speaking, he followed her across the room and behind the counter, through the clutter of aluminium surfaces and pots and pans in the kitchen, and into a small room at the back.

Surf posters covered the walls. In the corner was a single bunk with a thin mattress on it and a rolled-up sleeping bag. On a table next to the bed was a radio. She flicked it on and the music flowed. She sat down on the bed and kicked her shoes off.

‘Crash room,’ she explained, getting to her feet and pulling her t-shirt over her head. He found himself staring at her flat stomach, at the thin gold ring running through her navel. Then up, settling on her bra. ‘I sometimes sleep here when I want to catch some waves before the tourists wake up.’ She jerked her jeans down to her thighs, sat back down again and pulled them off. ‘So,’ she said, sitting back against the wall, her knees tucked up under her chin, ‘are you going to take your clothes off, or do I have to do it for you?’

*

‘Wake up.’

He opened his eyes, blissfully happy, sated, and disappointed to see she was no longer lying naked here beside him. She was standing up, dressed, her face no longer flushed.

‘What?’ he said.

‘I’ve got to get back. I promised Dad I’d help him close up tonight. You can stay here if you want. . .’

He sat up, fighting against the drowsiness. ‘No. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll walk you back.’

Half an hour later they were standing outside the Moonraker. On the walk over they hadn’t mentioned what had happened. They had talked about other things instead: Grancombe, Alex and Dan, Arnie Oldfield and Jack Dawes, things that suddenly no longer mattered to James at all. There was only Suzie. And he needed to be sure.

‘No regrets, then?’ he asked.

She slipped her arms round his waist. ‘None.’

‘You don’t have to say that.’ The sound of drunken laughter erupted behind the pub door. ‘If you want to leave what’s happened tonight as a one-off, then that’s fine. I’ll understand.’

‘Is that what you want?’

‘No, you know it’s not.’ Her eyes fell away from his, causing James to check himself. He couldn’t read her yet, in spite of what had happened, wasn’t sure whether this meant she was pulling away. ‘All I’m saying,’ he said, ‘is that if you wake up tomorrow morning and never, ever want to set eyes on me again, then that’s OK. I won’t feel good about it,’ he added, ‘but I’ll accept it for what it is.’

She scrutinised his face and asked, ‘This really is all new for you, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

The corners of her mouth folded into a half-smile. ‘Now. Us standing here talking. You telling me it’s all right if I want to bail out and never speak to you again. You know, that whole new relationship thing . . .’

She was right, of course. Even though he’d been with other people, it had never been like this. And, no, he didn’t know how to play it. He didn’t know the rules.

‘I don’t want to pressure you,’ he said, blushing, trying now to explain himself. ‘I mean, I know I want this, but I don’t want to risk—’

She squeezed his hand. ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘I’ve already told you, I don’t regret what happened.’ She leant forward and kissed him. ‘I screwed you sober, James. If we’d been wrecked, then maybe you’d be right to worry. Maybe then I’d tell you that I wasn’t up for seeing you again. And that’s something else you should know about me,’ she added. ‘If that was what I thought, I’d tell you. Up front. To your face. There wouldn’t be any shit about not being able to look you in the eyes.’

The bell for last orders chimed inside.

‘I’d better get going,’ she said, dropping his hand.

‘So, we’ll take it from here, then? Just see how things go?’

‘Sure. We’ll take it from here.’

‘I’ll call you.’

She reached out and grabbed his belt, pulling him in close to her. She kissed him again.

‘You’d better,’ she said, and opened the pub door and disappeared inside.

He started grinning. Couldn’t stop. So what the hell was he meant to do now? Where was he meant to go? Because he wasn’t tired. Might as well have been back on the coke again, for all the hope he had of being able to keep his eyes shut tonight. Too many thoughts pummelling his brain, too many possibilities racing through his imagination.

He walked slowly along the high street and up the steep winding road to Eagle’s Point. Once there, he walked to the edge of the cliff and leant on the railing. He stared out across the shimmering moonlit sea. Calm. He felt cradled, like nothing could touch him. The world had become new. What had gone before had been cancelled out.

He was at peace with himself.

He set off towards South Beach, wanting a long walk home, never wanting this night to break into dawn.

He reached the foot of the steps which led on to South Beach and across the sand past Surfers’ Turf. In the distance, at the far side of the beach, he saw flames, a campfire.

Alex. His favourite spot. It could only be him.

James surveyed the fire’s position, remembered sitting there himself. It was thirty yards along the rocks from the steps which led up to the woods at the top of the cliff. He could pass by, a shadow, and they’d be none the wiser. He walked on.

But then the shouting stopped him dead.

For a moment, he couldn’t work out what was going on. He heard a voice – Dan’s voice – bellowing something. Then a figure burst out of the darkness, pounding across the sand towards him.

Dan’s voice again, like an earthquake: ‘Get him!’

‘You’re a fucking prick.’ David said. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes pinched tight with disgust. ‘You know that, don’t you?’

James walked away from him to the window, looked down. Becky was closing the boot of David’s car, the last of their bags now stowed inside. Through the misted, rain-splashed window, James could see Lucy’s silhouette inside, her head and shoulders slumped against the closed door.

A pang of misery stabbed through him. Ditching her like that. No explanation. Nothing. The two of them coming in from dinner last night. Her climbing into bed. Him climbing in beside her. Then silence. Him lying on his side as she stroked his back and asked him what was wrong. The calm. The serenity of the moment, with her whispered words and warm body pressed against his. The peace and unity of it all, before he opened his mouth and told her that it couldn’t go on any longer.

‘I thought you were happy?’ David accused him.