Stonemouth

She pulls a few more deep, deep breaths — breaths so full you can see her chest expand and her body rise up within the waves with the extra buoyancy — then she exhales, like a long, extended sigh and slips under the water again.

Jel comes and sits down on the lounger next to me, holding a glass of something pale and bubbly. From the shape, probably a spritzer. ‘How you doing?’ she asks, with a glance at the pool.

‘Oh, fine,’ I tell her. ‘I’m swimming through my thoughts here.’ She’s in loose jeans and a half-open blouse over her bikini top, her hair still wet-dark from an earlier plunge. I was offered a loan of trunks but declined.

‘And how are you and Ellie?’ she asks.

I shake my head. ‘Not entirely sure.’

Jel is silent for a few seconds. ‘You can see the way you look at her,’ she says quietly, as though talking to her glass, before looking back up into my eyes.

‘Oh yeah?’

Jel’s smiling a small smile. She taps my forearm twice as she rises. ‘Best of luck.’

She goes off to talk to Phelpie and a couple of the others. I look after her for a moment, then turn back to watch Ellie.

She’s back under the water again, flowing along just above the glistening surface of the tiles on the pool bottom like something more liquid than the water itself.

18

A bunch of us head down to the beach, over the red sandstone wall at the bottom of the MacAvetts’ garden. There are a couple of steps on the garden side and a head-height, probably-about-time-it-was-replaced steel ladder down onto the sand on the other. The wall itself is smooth and solid on the garden side, pitted and half hollow on the face exposed to the spray and to a century of blown, scouring sand, leaving the pale mortar in skinny, granular ridges forming squared-off cells surrounding the striated scoops in the softer stone.

There’s Ellie and me, Phelpie, an awakened, groggy and still slightly grumpy Ferg, and Jel and Ryan. Ryan showed up from his own place in town ten minutes ago, maybe alerted to El’s presence in the family home by somebody because he looked sort of desperate and keen when he arrived, and not properly surprised when he saw Ellie.

She just smiled when she saw him, said hi. He’s tagging along now, keeping close to Jel and trying not to look at Ellie too much. Ellie’s in her swimsuit, skirted with one towel and holding another across her shoulders. Apparently the dip in the pool was all very well but it just gave her a taste for some sea swimming. The North Sea on an October evening with a stiff breeze blowing, crashing rollers and sand everywhere. It’s the very start of October, and the weather is still mild — warm if you were being generous — but still.

That’s my girl. Well, that was my girl. Let’s not get carried away here.

The two lanky, loping shapes of the MacAvett wolfhounds — apparently they’re called Trinny and Tobago — are already well into the distance, chasing each other through shallows and barking at the waves.

‘With you shortly,’ I tell Ellie, then drop back from the rest as they walk along. When I’m far enough back I take out my phone and call Grier. It sounds like the phone’s about to ring out and I’m thinking, Well, I’m carrying El’s jacket, and her phone’s in there; I could cheat and call Grier on that and stand a better chance of her answering, but it would be a mean trick. Then she picks up.

‘Hello?’

‘Grier? It’s Stewart.’

‘Yeah? What?’

‘You got a moment?’

I hear her sigh. ‘Been wanting a moment all day, haven’t you?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Okay. But tell me now: am I going to enjoy this?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Better keep it short then. Say your piece, Stu.’

‘Did you set it all up?’

‘Set what all up?’

‘Five years ago? The Mearnside? The kids-’n’-cameras idea. Telling Jel I was her biggest fan. Taking a camera off one of the children and making sure you got the right shot of me and Jel.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Just asking.’

‘Why the fuck would I do all that?’

‘I don’t know. Sheer devilment? Jealousy, maybe.’

‘Jealousy? Seriously; are you serious?’

‘Well, there was that time in London when you came to stay at my place. You seemed, kind of…interested, then? In me? In us fucking?’

‘Maybe you remember it different from me.’

‘Maybe. But not that different.’

‘You do flatter yourself sometimes, don’t you, Stu?’

‘So you didn’t really want to? I completely misunderstood you sliding a hand into my pants and lip-chewing my ear?’

‘Oh, there might have been a sort of transferred urge. That other guy, Brad, he turned out to be useless, remember? And maybe there was sort of an experimental thing, too? To see what Ellie had been getting all those years, sort of level-up with her? Just cos the opportunity had presented itself; not something I’d planned for or anything? And, frankly, if this is what you’re really like, then I’m really glad now it never happened. You did notice I didn’t exactly stalk you after that? Honestly, Stu, you’re not that…addictive. What makes you think I’m into older men anyway?’