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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
When volcanologist Surtsey finds her married lover dead, she pockets his phone and makes the fatal decision to keep her discovery secret … but someone has been watching… 'A cracking and highly original thriller' Mark Billingham 'You don't read Fault Lines so much as you white-knuckle your way through its twists and turns' Megan Abbott 'A superb, highly original psychological chiller' Steve Cavanagh ____________________ In a reimagined contemporary Edinburgh, where a tectonic fault has opened up to produce a new volcano in the Firth of Forth, and where tremors are an everyday occurrence, volcanologist Surtsey makes a shocking discovery. On a clandestine trip to new volcanic island The Inch, to meet Tom, her lover and her boss, she finds his lifeless body, and makes the fatal decision to keep their affair, and her discovery, a secret. Desperate to know how he died, but also terrified she'll be exposed, Surtsey's life quickly spirals into a nightmare when someone makes contact – someone who claims to know what she's done… ____________________ 'An explosive thriller' Daily Record 'A cracking-good thriller with some seriously good writing and some beautifully designed characters … Here's a writer pushing the thriller envelope, giving the reader not just a good novel, but also a unique one' David Pitt, Booklist 'Novel and elegant … it is the book's thought-provoking and heart-breaking moments that carry the reader through the story and which resonate most at the end' Scotsman 'Both a meditation on the volatility of human nature and a gripping thriller with plenty of twists and turns … An original and addictive thriller, as intelligent as it is shocking' Foreword Reviews 'Richly characterised, beautifully crafted, this is a book that you truly inhabit' Emma Kavanagh 'Scotland's truest exponent of noir' Chris Brookmyre 'A subtly off-kilter speculative thriller that builds to a truly explosive ending' Eva Dolan 'A pacey, gripping read' Louise Voss 'Sexy, fearless and addictive' Helen FitzGerald 'Johnstone weaves his compelling and original tale with great skill and elegance from the gripping beginning to a tense and explosive ending' Amanda Jennings 'Brilliantly unputdownable' Martyn Waites 'Superb' Luca Veste 'Blending powerful imagination and plotting, this is the work of a writer at the top of his game' Stuart Neville 'Plays with every single emotion' Susi Holliday 'This had me hooked from the first page' Cass Green 'Poignant, gripping and packed with seismic shocks' Paddy Magrane 'Incisive, intelligent and imaginative' Michael J. Malone 'I was completely swept away' Caroline Mitchell 'Hits you lie a seismic shock' Douglas Skelton 'Grabs you by the throat in the first chapter' Neil Broadfoot
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Seitenzahl: 315
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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Fault Lines
Doug Johnstone
For Andrew and Eleanor
Contents
1
The moment she set foot on the Inch she felt something was wrong. She tied the three-seater RIB to a mooring post on the jetty and turned. The island looked the same, black sand shimmering in the low summer light, the sun’s rays bouncing down the Forth and hitting the island in a low-slung blaze. Beyond the beach hardened lava flows billowed down from the volcanic vents that dominated the island. Scraps of moss and sea grass cut green through the black and grey of the rocky terrain, over the years they’d brought life to the newborn land and clung on.
It was too quiet, Surtsey realised, that was the problem. Where were the gulls and crows? Scientists had been coming to the island since it emerged in a giant plume of volcanic ash twenty-five years ago. The birds knew that humans meant possible food and usually greeted their arrival with a flurry of squawks and shrieks. But she was alone, just the low ruffle of waves on the beach, the hollow thud of her rigid-hull boat bobbing against the jetty.
And where was Tom’s boat? He didn’t always moor at the jetty, sometimes he landed round the coast, paranoid about them being seen together even out here in the middle of the firth. But that was such a hassle and he’d been relaxed about it recently, so Surtsey was surprised not to see it tied up.
She did a slow three-sixty, the salty bite of the sea air in her nose, and wondered what she was missing. Inchkeith to the northwest, its lighthouse and derelict battlements silhouetted against the setting sun. Behind it Burntisland and the three bridges, a mess of struts and cables, supports and towers. Round to Granton and Leith harbour, the beaches of Portobello and Joppa hidden by the island’s peaks from this side. It was deliberate that they met on the north side, in case of 2prying eyes with strong binoculars. Surtsey looked up at the twin volcanic peaks, brooding in the dusk. Surtsey had been up those slopes, explored every scrap of the Inch over many visits since she began her studies. So lucky to be a volcanologist and have this on her doorstep, the best laboratory in the world with Edinburgh University leading research.
She looked to the east, the flat expanse of East Lothian. She got a flutter of unease at the missing Cockenzie power station chimneys. They’d been a landmark of her childhood in Joppa, and their recent demolition left a flicker of longing in her heart. Further east was Berwick Law then open sea, tankers drifting out there, wash glittering in the light.
Where was he?
She checked her phone. No new message, just the text from earlier:
Fancy a picnic tonight? Usual time and place. Tx
‘Picnic’ was a stupid euphemism, Tom trying to be careful. Unnecessary, since it was from the phone he only used for her, the phone his wife didn’t know about.
It had been going on for six months. The first time was after a drinks thing at uni, celebrating a new grant award for the research group, money that would keep everyone coming back to the Inch for years. After cheap Prosecco in the Grant Institute at King’s Buildings a handful of them moved on to beers at The Old Bell. Surtsey was drunk enough to flirt with him and to be flattered by his attention. He was twenty years older and married, but he was sharp, had authority and a certain charm, still handsome and trim. And he was ridiculously grateful, one reason she kept it going, the look in his eyes when she undressed in front of him. He was getting to fuck a firm twenty-five year old for the first time since his wife had been that age, and he was like an excitable puppy. It was so different to sex with Brendan, ages with her, cute and skinny, innocent and uncomplicated.
She hit reply on her phone:3
I’m here. Where r u? x
She walked off the jetty and jumped onto the beach. Even though she knew the geological processes that made it she was still amazed by the black sand, glistening like oil where it was wet, more like iron filings above high tide. She lifted a handful and let it run through her fingers, then brushed her hand on her dress. She wasn’t really a summer dress kind of person, vest tops and jeans usually, but she like to play the young ingénue with Tom, actually enjoyed the stereotype. They both realised the cliché of the situation, older academic having an affair with young PhD student. Surtsey imagined she was in a Richard Curtis film or a corny novel by some middle-aged Oxbridge guy.
There were no footprints in the sand. That didn’t necessarily mean anything, Tom could’ve landed round the coast and come over the ridge. But something about the blankness of the sand unnerved her. And the birds, where were the birds?
She walked up the beach onto the patchy grass and called him. She wasn’t supposed to do that even though he kept it on silent, but something didn’t feel right.
Maybe he got caught up with Alice and the kids at home, unable to make excuses. That went with the territory, of course. He wouldn’t have just forgotten, that wasn’t like him. One of the things Surtsey liked about their set-up was that she was at the forefront of his mind throughout the day. She liked that compared to Brendan, who occasionally treated her like an afterthought.
The phone went to voicemail. She didn’t leave a message.
She walked round the coast towards the scientific hut, its white walls and blue corrugated roof stark against the black landscape. The hut was little more than a bothy with a bed, some basic lab and storage equipment, and a stove in the corner. He wasn’t likely to be there, they never used it, scared of leaving a trace that other department members would find. They always chose somewhere outdoors but sheltered, on their own little island paradise only a couple of miles from Edinburgh. That was part of this whole thing, their shared love of the Inch, the 4violence of its creation, its settling and erosion, the spread of life across it. An Eden for them to share.
Surtsey had been obsessed with the place her whole life. Just as the Inch was being spewed from the bowels of the earth, a new volcanic island created from an unknown fault line in the Firth of Forth, Surtsey’s mum was in the back of a taxi on the way to the old Royal to give birth to her. Hence the weird name, Louise naming her daughter after another new island born from the sea, the Icelandic island she’d visited as a young volcanologist herself.
Surtsey was at the hut now. She hesitated with her hand at the door then swallowed and pushed it open.
Empty. A blanket stretched across the bed, the stove cold, equipment untouched.
She left and looked around again. Further west was a rise in the rock, dipping down to a small cove. A seagull came out of the darkening sky, a bluster of wings, then landed out of sight behind the mound.
Surtsey walked towards it, her stomach tight. She checked her phone again, no message. She picked her way over the cracked surface, careful in her Converse. She liked the way the trainers looked with the dress, made her feel less prim.
As she approached the edge of the lava flow two crows burst up from behind it, cawing and flapping, a flurry of black feathers. They descended behind the bank, out of sight again.
Surtsey reached the edge of the outcrop. Thirty yards below, on the sand of the cove, a dozen gulls and crows were gathered on a single low rock, a blur of squawking activity, pecking at each other. Surtsey watched for a few moments trying to make sense of it. Gradually she realised they weren’t pecking each other, they were pecking at the rock beneath them.
Then she got it.
It wasn’t a rock it was a body, and they were feasting on it.
2
She looked around as if someone might appear with an answer. She scanned the horizon for any activity apart from the chaos of birds. Nothing. The air was full of caws and screeches and she couldn’t concentrate.
She looked at her phone then back at the birds. She picked her way down the rocky escarpment, sharp stones jabbing the soles of her shoes. Her dress snagged on a ragged edge and she pulled it free. She felt hot, blood in her cheeks with the effort.
The sound of the birds grew louder as she got nearer, the tussle at the beach in full flow, gulls lifting into the air then settling back down. Surtsey saw clothing, a light jacket, jeans, brown shoes. Clothes she thought she recognised. The birds were concentrating on the exposed head and hands, where they could get better purchase.
She stumbled onto the sand, the birds ignoring her, but as she walked closer the nearest crows began shuffling away from her. She hesitated, hand to her mouth. She looked back up the way she’d come, then out to sea. The sun was setting now, just a few strands of pink between the slats of the bridges in the distance. It was still light, though, would be for a couple of hours yet at this time of year.
She turned back to look at the body. She was twenty yards away. She saw a seagull pick something from the face, flap up into the air chased by two others. It evaded them, switched back beyond high tide and landed, pulling whatever it was between its beak and feet.
Surtsey’s stomach lurched. Acid rose from her stomach, but she swallowed it down. She took a breath and strode towards the body, waving her hands, shooing the birds away, clapping and shouting. They flustered into the sky but didn’t go too far, circling above her, a mass of black and white darting and skipping through the air, eyeing her.6
She stood over the body and felt another rush of blood, heart clattering in her ribs, fingers tingling.
Tom.
She closed her eyes, kept them closed for a long time.
She opened them and looked away, up at the vents towering above her, over at the spread of dried lava tumbling down the hillside from them. Out to sea. Then eventually she turned back to his body, made herself look.
His head was caved in on the right hand side, blood soaking the sand and making it shine. His scalp was a mess of skin, bone and hair on that side, his ear mangled and hanging off, eyebrow collapsed, cheekbone flat. His eyes stared up at the sky.
She’d seen those eyes earlier today back at the office, glancing at her in a team meeting, something passing between them, a little spark. Nothing profound, just a look.
She fell to her knees, felt the roughness of the sand on her skin. She thought about Alice, the girls. How would they cope? She thought about the reaction in the department, the professor no longer there to guide them.
She reached out to touch his hand but hesitated. The wedding ring, a simple platinum band. He never hid it or took it off when they were together, and she’d never asked him to.
Above her the crows and gulls suddenly stopped fighting and flew higher into the sky. She put her hands to her face, covered her eyes. Sat on her knees for a moment, then felt a vibration, subsonic, a sensation she recognised. It grew stronger and the sand shuffled around her knees. She felt a ripple through her body from the land beneath. An earthquake, a pretty strong one. She tried to get up but a judder pitched her forward and she rested her hand on Tom’s chest for balance. She pushed up and eased herself to her feet, spread her weight as she’d been taught, looked at the gulls way overhead. The ground kept shuddering, no rhythm to it, creaks and tilts. Even though she’d lived a lifetime with them, she never got used to it. She tried to imagine a time before the Inch, before the new fault line had opened up, when Scotland never 7had an earthquake worth mentioning. But it seemed impossible, they were as much a part of life as breathing.
The world trembled on, vibrations in her legs, thrumming in her pelvis and womb, her stomach, spreading up her spine. There was a lurch to the right and she stumbled, caught herself. She heard a ripping noise from above and saw a cascade of small boulders tumbling from the side of the vents, clattering down the rock face, kicking up grit and dirt as they rolled, then settling a few hundred yards away.
She was OK, that’s what she kept telling herself. Unless the earth actually opened up and swallowed her right here on the beach, she was safe. It was buildings you had to watch for. That and tsunamis, but they’d never had one here yet in twenty-five years, and while this quake was sizeable it wasn’t the biggest she’d experienced.
The throb beneath her feet began to ebb away, echoing down into the mantle, the earth settling back. The whole thing had lasted maybe thirty seconds. She wondered what number it was on the scale.
Then she thought of Tom. Alice and the girls. And herself. The slut, the mistress. The home wrecker.
The silence after the quake was ominous, forbidding.
If she called the police she would have to explain what she was doing here, what Tom was doing here. Then it would all come out. His wife and family. Her mum, Brendan. Everyone would know.
She spotted something in the sand beyond his right hand. The old Nokia, the phone he used just for her. She looked around at the shore, wondered where his boat was. The birds were returning, getting closer above her head. She picked up his phone and stared at it, wiped it on her dress to get the sand off. She felt ridiculous in this dress now, a piece of fakery. She had been living a lie with Tom.
She looked at him.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and started walking back towards the jetty.
3
The spray from the prow dampened her dress and felt like a slap in the face. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the salty tang of the sea stinging her skin. The outboard motor was at full throttle, the whine of the engine filling her ears as the boat bucked over the waves. She headed east towards the widening mouth of the firth, refusing to look at the island behind or the coastline to either side. If she kept going all the way to Scandinavia she would never have to deal with any of it.
The motor strained and she became aware of the clamour of it out here on the empty water. She cut the engine and the silence pressed down on her, the slap of wave on hull the only sound. She sat for a long time listening to that noise, trying to find a pattern in it, but it was disjointed and random.
Eventually she turned back to the Inch. It looked like a cancerous growth on the skin of the water, the two volcanic lumps of the vents rippling down to the stark southeastern cliffs. The northern beach and jetty were invisible from here. The same for the cove where Tom lay.
She looked south to Joppa and Portobello. The sun had set but the sky was still eerily bright, that unsettling paradox of Scottish summer-time. In this light the beach seemed smeared across the land, thick painted brushstrokes in front of the precise sketch lines of the houses behind.
She tried to pick out her own place from the row of low tenements at the eastern end of the shoreline. Some lights coming on in the front rooms, but she couldn’t see which was hers. She wondered if Halima was in the kitchen knocking together something spicy with a large glass of Rioja in her hand. Or Iona, throwing clothes around trying to decide what to wear for tonight’s shift. People she loved going about their 9lives. She stared at the stumpy, flat-roofed houses and wished she was inside, sharing department gossip with Halima or shouting at Iona to pick up after herself.
She looked at the bigger Victorian properties along the prom. She could pick out St Columba’s easily with the observation tower poking up from the sprawl of dark stone. Her mum would be there. She was diminishing every day, retreating from the world one breath at a time. So much life reduced to a bag of bones, half her stomach cut away, growths in her pelvis and liver, tangled up her spine. Only a matter of time.
Surtsey thought about Tom. She pictured his slender fingers on her hips that first time, a reassuring touch to her elbow in the office, his goofy smile whenever she walked into the room.
She’d been pushing them away but now the thoughts slipped in. How had it happened? Maybe he fell and hit his head. But where was his boat? It could be moored beyond the cove, but why do that? If his boat wasn’t there, that meant someone else had taken it or it had drifted away. If someone else took it, how had they got to the island themselves, where was their boat? Did they come with Tom, was it someone he knew? Was it murder?
Maybe he fell and hit his head on a rock, staggered forward onto the beach. The hardened tephra and palagonite tuff were razor sharp in places, an edge to the wrong part of your head and you’d be in trouble. She hadn’t examined his wound closely, hadn’t looked around for rocks or boulders, too keen to escape.
It must be lonely back there on the island. When eventually it got dark in the early hours and the wind picked up along the Forth, he would need a blanket to keep warm. Stupid thoughts, chewing her up.
She trailed a hand in the water, cold against her fingers, and shivered as a breeze stirred around her.
Too quiet, too much time to think. She needed to be moving, active.
She started the engine and pointed the boat towards shore, opened the throttle and picked up speed, flecks of spray in her face. She opened her mouth and tasted the salt.10
She was at the east end of Portobello beach in ten minutes. She angled the prow alongside the last groyne and drove the boat as close as she could, then cut the engine, flipped off her shoes and jumped out, pulling the boat in on the towrope. She heaved it onto the trailer she’d left sitting in the wash and fastened it, then hauled the whole thing up the sand to the gap in the low seawall, then onto the prom.
Her muscles burned as she pulled the boat and trailer round the back of Esplanade Terrace onto the cobbles of Joppa Park. She stopped at the back of her house and opened the boatshed doors, wheeled the trailer inside. She was panting as she dropped the trailer handle, hands on her knees, bent over to get her breath back. Eventually she stood up. From the small, cobwebbed window of the shed she could see into the kitchen at the back of the house. Halima was there, drinking and cooking, just as she had pictured.
Surtsey grabbed a towel off a nail stuck in the wall and dried her face, hair and arms, then dabbed at the front of her dress. She left the shed and went back out into the street, closing the door as quietly as she could.
She stood breathing for a few moments, trying to get her heart to slow, then lifted the latch on the back gate and walked through, clattering it shut behind her. When she turned round Halima was smiling from the kitchen, already pouring a glass of red wine for her.
4
‘Hey, babes, you’re back early.’ Halima handed the wine to Surtsey before she was even through the sliding doors. Surtsey tried to keep her hand steady as she took it, then had three gulps, almost finishing the glass.
Halima smiled. ‘Date didn’t go well, huh?’
Surtsey shook her head. To cover for her and Tom over the last few months she’d sold Halima a line about trying online dating behind Brendan’s back. Since she and Halima lived and worked together, she needed something to explain her absences, and that was the perfect cover story. It made Halima into a co-conspirator with Surtsey, gave them a secret they shared, and made sure she wouldn’t ever blurt it out to anyone. Plus she knew Halima wouldn’t judge her.
‘So who was this dick?’
‘Just a hipster in a folk band. Loved himself.’
‘His loss.’
Halima wandered over to the stove where a pot of something was simmering. It smelt spicy and sweet and Surtsey felt hungry, then disgusted with her body for carrying on regardless.
‘Ready in ten minutes,’ Halima said. ‘Get yourself settled and we can have a boozy night in.’ She waved her glass, the wine almost spilling over the side. ‘Drink our troubles away.’
Surtsey finished her wine then filled both of them up from the bottle.
‘Sounds great,’ she said.
*
The stainless steel hash pipe seemed to glow as Halima handed it to her. It was the size of a credit card, small bowl at one end, fern leaf 12engraved along the edge. It was Halima’s twenty-first birthday present from her mum and dad. The Maliks didn’t conform to the strict Muslim parent stereotype, second-generation Scots-Pakistani hippies who ran a drop-in centre for troubled teens in Glasgow and grew asparagus and courgettes on their allotment.
The warmth of the pipe in Surtsey’s hand sent a tingle along her fingers. She sparked the lighter, held the flame to the grass in the bowl and took a hit. The crackle of burning grass and the gas fizzing in the Zippo filled her brain. She felt thirsty and took a careful gulp of Shiraz, then placed her glass down and handed the pipe back.
‘I’m wrecked,’ Halima giggled.
‘Yep.’
The news was on television in the corner of the living room. Surtsey blinked and looked round. All her mum’s stuff still here, despite the fact she didn’t live here any more. The whitewashed wooden bookshelves full of geophysics and earth science books, the saggy brown leather sofas, the worn Indonesian rug on the floorboards, the out-of-tune piano against the back wall. And the Celestron telescope set up in the bay window, pointing at the Inch. Surtsey had used it earlier today before she left for her rendezvous. She stared at it now.
She turned and tried to focus on the photographs lining the mantelpiece. Her graduation picture in that stupid gown next to a snapshot of Iona taken when she didn’t realise, the only way Louise could catch her younger daughter on camera in the last few years. Then a holiday photo of the three of them squinting into the sun at Pompeii, Louise’s idea of a fun family trip, traipsing around hundreds of mummified people killed by a volcanic explosion.
She tried not to think about Tom on the island. She should’ve found a blanket for him, taken the bedding from the hut, kept him cosy against the wind.
‘What you thinking about?’ Halima said.
Her voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well.
Surtsey took in Halima’s glossy black hair, dark eyes, sly smile. They’d been best friends since freshers’ week six years ago, meeting on 13a dumb Geosoc pub crawl down Cowgate and immediately clicking, bunking off halfway and pitching up at a shitty dive on Niddrie Street, an old man’s pub with bright strip lights, stuffed animals on the gantry and empty ashtrays still on the table.
At first they bonded over mockery of the straighter students on the course, but that acerbic fluff gradually gave way to something deeper, a shared understanding of the importance of friendship and family. Hal was the youngest of six siblings and was forever heading off in a bright sari to some cousin’s wedding or aunt’s birthday, rolling her eyes at the conformity but also revelling in it. We all live multiple lives, Surtsey thought, play different roles as a daughter, friend, student, lover.
Surtsey remembered that Halima had asked a question.
‘Mum,’ she said.
‘Oh, babes.’ Halima reached over and touched Surtsey’s hair. She ran a finger around the edge of her ear and Surtsey shivered, then she touched Surtsey’s loop earring, a tiny tug that pulled at the lobe.
Now Surtsey really was thinking about her mum. They’d spent three years apart when Surtsey left school, the usual quest for independence. Surtsey split rent with Halima on a crappy student flat in Sciennes, five minutes from the action of George Square. But Louise got the diagnosis at the start of Surtsey’s final year and she moved back in to help out, tearful at first but some laughs along the way, Iona storming around as if their mum dying was a personal affront, something she still did. Surtsey could understand that anger, God knows she felt it too, but in the end what good did it do?
Six months ago, with Louise deteriorating fast, they managed to get a place in the hospice five minutes up the road. Surtsey didn’t have it in her to keep changing grown-up nappies, cleaning up sick and helping her mum to the toilet. Louise hated all that too, ashamed of being babied by her own daughter. Through all this, Iona kept stomping around refusing to accept, a human storm cloud rumbling through life.
So this house was Surtsey and Iona’s home now, and Halima was here too having moved in partly to keep Surtsey company, partly because it was rent free. Louise was never coming home, that was the 14truth. The only way she was leaving the hospice was in a wooden box. Surtsey felt sick thinking about it.
She stared at the television, her stoned brain sucked into the glow of it. It was a news story about the earthquake earlier. 5.7 on the scale, no real damage done, a few minor aftershocks, a warning about future tremors. They were so used to it now it was barely worth mentioning unless it was a really big one.
She wondered what time it was. They’d been drinking and smoking for hours, watching Kimmy Schmidt, Parks & Rec, old 30 Rock.
Surtsey frowned and pushed herself up from the sofa. It took enormous effort, muscles straining. She stumbled over to the telescope and bent to look through the eyepiece.
Halima laughed. ‘What are you doing? It’s dark, you can’t see anything.’
Surtsey kept her eye to the telescope, staring at the blackness.
5
Surtsey was too wired from the grass to sleep, lying in bed imagining she was in a coffin. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Tom, the way the bones of his face weren’t quite right any more, the smear of blood on his scalp, the glassy look in his eyes. The birds would’ve returned to him after she left and she felt guilty about that. But she had to go.
She heard an electronic ping she didn’t recognise coming from somewhere. She sat up and lifted her jeans from the floor. Fished her phone out the pocket and pressed the button. Nothing. She looked around the room for a few seconds then remembered. Tom’s cheap Nokia, the one he only ever used for her. She had lifted it from the Inch and brought it home. While Hal was cooking earlier she brought it upstairs and stashed it in the drawer of her bedside table.
She opened the drawer, picked it up and swiped. A text message from an unknown number:
I know you were there.
She dropped the phone on the bed and her hand shot to her temple. She felt dizzy. What the hell? She stared at the phone lying on the covers then glanced out of the window, dark except for a lighthouse blip in the distance.
She turned back to the phone, picked it up, gripping it tight in her fist, stared at the words until the screen went dark. She brought it back to life and sent a reply.
Who is this?
She pressed send and waited. Someone had Tom’s number and 16knew that she had his phone. They must’ve seen her take it from the island. So they were there. It must be the murderer, unless they were bluffing. Maybe it was someone who knew she’d been sleeping with him, someone putting stuff together, fishing for information.
No answer.
She tried to call but there was no caller ID and the phone just bleeped out. She tried again, same result. Then she texted:
How do you have this number?
She stared at the screen, the green of it the only light in the darkness. She checked back through the phone’s history, texts and calls, but the only other interactions had been with her own phone.
Then she heard a noise coming from downstairs. A clattering about in the hall, the clomping of feet. She swallowed hard and took a long, slow breath. More thumping around, indistinct, then finally a familiar sound, girlish giggles and comedy shushing, two voices. Iona was back from her shift, and not alone. Again.
There was the sound of a glass smashing, mumbled swearing, a thud against a wall. She was probably fine down there, whoever she was with. But … Surtsey arched out of bed, still holding Tom’s phone. The touch of her toes on the floor made her feel connected, like she was an ancient tree. Shit, that grass was stronger than Halima’s usual stuff. She checked the phone screen again, to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated it. The message and her reply were still there. She threw on her old green hoodie, put the phone in the pouch pocket and headed downstairs, peeling her feet from the floor then replacing them like a badly programmed robot.
Iona was in the kitchen staring at bits of wine glass on the floor. She wore a tight Ramones T-shirt and black shorts, her legs long and tanned, that snake tattoo up her left thigh. Her dyed-red hair was in a mess across her face. Behind her was a guy, big and dumb-looking, sleeve tattoos and a black shirt, jeans hanging off his arse.
Iona looked up and beamed a smile.17
‘Sis,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’
She waved at the floor of glass between them.
‘Fucking broke.’
She put a hand out to steady herself. Surtsey looked at the clock on the microwave, 3:17am. If she’d finished at The Espy at one, that meant only two hours of drinking. How could she be this wasted? Unless she started earlier.
The dumb guy nodded. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ Surtsey said.
Iona seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘Sur, this is Jez. From Sydney.’
‘Sur,’ Jez said, ‘cool name.’
Surtsey scoped the guy with a slow gaze while she stroked the phone in her pocket. She looked at Iona and widened her eyes. ‘Really?’
Iona didn’t notice or ignored it. ‘Join us for a snifter, sis.’ She looked around and spotted a half-full wine bottle on the worktop. She stotted over to it, glass crunching under her Doc boots.
‘I’m all right,’ Surtsey said.
Something occurred to Iona. ‘Hey, is the H-bomb still up? Wouldn’t mind a wee toke.’
‘She’s asleep.’
Iona made exaggerated head movements, looking around. ‘Maybe there’s some shit around here somewhere.’
Jez stood there filling up space, smiling like a chimp.
Surtsey needed to get out of there.
‘See you in the morning,’ she said, leaving the kitchen. She walked into the living room, pocketed Halima’s pipe and grass then went to the front door. She pushed her feet into flowery wellies, pulled on her Parka and left the house.
It was already the next day outside. The sky light behind Berwick Law, orange tracers into blue, high wisps of cloud glowing in the predawn. Oil tankers with their lights on in the mouth of the firth, the street lights across in Fife. And the Inch, a dark presence against the violet sky to the west, an absence of light like a miniature black hole 18in the sea. Surtsey stared at it for a long time, thinking about the message.
She looked up and down the prom, but there was no one in sight. Eventually she climbed over the wall and jumped down to the beach. She kicked the wellies off, wanted to feel connected to the sand. Scrunched her toes into it then walked towards the sea, the tide well out, a hundred yards of squelching underfoot until the soft whisper of the waves. She stepped in up to her calves, the bottoms of her pyjamas soaked. She held her breath against the cold, felt her heart quicken, involuntary reactions, no thought required.
She pulled the pipe and grass out, packed the bowl and lit it. Sucked, kept it in her lungs, imagined she was made of magma. She exhaled, tried to picture her spirit leaving her body along with the smoke, up into the atmosphere, circling the earth with the air currents forever.
She was really wasted.
Someone knew, that’s all she could figure out. Someone was there, had seen her, and knew. But who? How?
She stared east. The sun would rise in an hour. She would have to get up, go to the office and pretend everything was OK. She closed her eyes and realised she couldn’t feel the coldness of the water any more. You could get used to anything, it seemed.
6
Surtsey stood outside the hospice and tried to clear her head. The small windows of the building’s observation tower were blazing in the sunshine, making her squint. She’d slept for four hours, crashing when the grass buzz wore off. She woke in a fug, then remembered. Ran to the toilet and puked in the sink, tasting grass and red wine. She spent a few minutes staring in the mirror, straightening her shit out, then got dressed and tried to anchor herself to the day.
She had her back to the sea now as if she wasn’t speaking to it for what it had subjected her to. She took Tom’s phone out of her pocket and checked it. Nothing. She’d found an old charger cable in a drawer last night, charged it up overnight. She shook her head at the phone now, lifted the screen to her forehead, felt its coolness, then put it back in her pocket.
She thought of Alice waking up this morning, frantic that her husband wasn’t home, that he hadn’t been in touch.
Her neck was stiff and heavy, and she cricked it as she opened the gate.
St Columba’s was one of four old, sprawling buildings on the prom, nestled between the Joppa terraces at the east end and the more modest buildings further west. In a previous life it had been a kids’ nursery, so had swapped one regime of nappy changing and cleaning up sick for another. Next to it were two privately owned Gothic homes, all steep turrets and high walled gardens, then at the far end was the scuffed up Dalriada pub, wooden pirate with broken cutlass standing outside and sit-in folk sessions most nights. Together, the four houses were like a huddle of dishevelled elderly ladies gazing out to sea.
The hospice building was unique with its square observation tower jutting from the crooks and crevices. Surtsey didn’t know if it ever got 20used. Most of the inmates, as Louise called them, couldn’t get up the spiral staircase, Louise herself once abandoning an expedition when she couldn’t lift her drip-bag frame past the second step. You would get a great view from up there, East Lothian, Fife, the teardrop of the Inch between.
Surtsey sighed and pushed the front door open.
