Stonemouth

She seemed to think about it, then she raised herself up on tiptoes and put her hand gently on my cheek. She came forward and kissed me lightly on the other cheek. ‘That would be very all right with me.’

We stood smiling slyly at each other for what felt like half a minute before Ferg’s voice rang out. ‘Gilmour! I hope you haven’t crushed, smoked, given away or lost my fucking cigarettes, you unmitigated cur. Morning, darlings.’

The first time Ellie and I actually had sex was mildly disastrous: more awkward than my very first time, nearly three years earlier, with Kat Naughton; my first, all of nineteen at the time. Lovely girl.

Married now with two kids; works in the council Planning Office. She was engaged and it was just a fling for her so it went no further but she always used to wave and say hi when our paths crossed subsequently. Anyway, that had been a breeze and a mutual laugh compared to my first fumblings with Ellie, in the dark, in my bed, one night while my parents were away.

She was tense and unsure and while she said no, she wasn’t a virgin, and there was no hint of a hymen, or blood, it was neither a joyous romping bonk-fest nor a sinuously graceful coupling of two bodies utterly meant for each other. My extensive research via the media of prose and film had led me to believe it would be one or the other. She was quiveringly tight and I came too quickly the first time, but we persevered, relaxed a bit and it got better. Still all a tad edgy, though, and in the morning she seemed almost downcast.

‘You still want to keep seeing me?’ she asked over mugs of tea in bed, not looking me in the eyes.

‘Are you completely insane?’

(I wouldn’t say this now; you always say things like this attempting reverse psychology or whatever, but now I know how insecure and even neurotic women can be, and often the more beautiful and intelligent, the more insecure and neurotic they are. Beats me — positively unfair, in fact — but there you are.)

‘I kind of fell in love with you three years ago,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been dreaming, fantasising about you ever since. I’ve wanted you for ever, El. I’m just terrified you’ll get bored with me.’

‘Now who’s insane?’ she murmured, picking at the duvet cover, though she was smiling.

I told her about seeing her at the Lido that sun-hazy day during the summer of 2000, about how just that single head-to-the-side, hair-swinging-out gesture had captivated me utterly.

She snorted, then laughed. ‘I get water in my ears if I don’t do that,’ she told me. ‘It’s like walking around with my head underwater all day if I don’t.’

Ellie was crazily self-conscious about her looks; according to her, her entire body was just plain weird. I can’t even remember which breast she thought was bigger than the other; they were both OMG-I’m-going-to-faint beautiful and looked like a perfect matching pair to me, but to hear her talk one was a tennis ball and the other a crash helmet. There was a cute little crease across the end of one of her gorgeous light-brown nipples but as far as she was concerned it was the Grand Canyon.

We were a week’s worth of sex into our relationship before I got to go down on her, for goodness’ sake; she was convinced her body was a feast of freakishness below the waist.

‘But this is beautiful!’ I told her, the first time I was allowed to get down there in daylight and take a look. It was also the first time it occurred to me that this is why girls like frills and frilly things; they have their own frilliness, built in. ‘Seriously; beautiful.’

‘Oh, God!’ she said, slapping a hand over her eyes, patently mortified.

‘What?’

‘Engineering and Philosophy.’

‘I didn’t even know you could do that. Anywhere.’

Ellie looked thoughtful. ‘I think strings might have been pulled,’ she admitted. I looked at her. She shrugged. ‘Not directly Dad; John Ancraime.’

‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘Engineering and Philosophy? This isn’t a wind-up?’

A tiny frown puckered between her eyebrows. ‘Of course not.’

I whistled. ‘Best of luck with that.’ I wiped some spray off my face.

We were sailing; Ellie had a wee dinghy you could squeeze two people on to. We’d trailed it down from the house to the slip at the end of the Promenade and pushed the thing through light surf, wetsuited up. Dinghies were sort of weirdly old school, I reckoned; everybody else I knew who was aquatically sporty was into surfing, windsurfing, kite-surfing and jet-skis, but Ellie liked old-fashioned sailing, and admittedly it was something we could do together. This mostly meant getting cold and wet together, but it was, well, bracing.

‘Yeah, it’s a challenge,’ Ellie agreed. She had her hair up under a peaked cap, a few strands blowing loose. She looked great. She squinted at the breeze-swollen sail, then at the ruffled patterns the gusts of wind were pressing onto the waters all around us. ‘Going about,’ she announced.

We started bum-shuffling, hauling on some ropes and slackening off others.