I was glad of the blanket, even over my coat. The wind was stiff and salty, making me lick my lips, making the cold wine taste sweeter than my first sip had in the kitchen, and I drank half the glass as we sat there in silence, listening to the dead leaves of the rowan clattering on the bricks of the path as the wind stirred them, listening to the slack sound of low tide sloshing in the distance, listening to the quiet murmur of The Big Friendly Giant on the Fisher Price soothing Dillon to sleep again. It was so long before he spoke that I jumped at the sound.
“I didn’t love her,” Gus said. “There.”
“Okay,” I said. “Things were pretty tough, I know.”
“Ever,” he said. “She was-I love the kids and I loved the idea of a family. Making a family. But I didn’t love Becky. I didn’t even like her very much. And the cops and the undertakers’ guys and the folk at the hospital last night are all treating me like I’m heartbroken.”
“I heard you on the phone,” I said. “Trying to talk her down. I saw the state you were in. I see you trying to stop the cops finding out bad stuff about her.”
“I don’t want the kids hurt, that’s all that is. But I didn’t love her, Jessie. I’m not sorry she’s gone.”
“You’re in shock,” I said.
“I would never have left her,” he said. “But all I feel now is free.”
“Okay,” I said again, needing to stop him. I couldn’t bear it. That dark-eyed girl, whichever one of them she was, cold and dead and her kids not even old enough so they’d remember her. “You’re telling me how you feel. I shouldn’t be arguing. I’m sorry.”
“Have I got a free pass to say anything then?” he said. “Get out of jail?”
I couldn’t speak. What more could there be?
“When Ruby was born,” Gus said, “I felt love like I never even imagined before. No way to explain it. Same with Dillon.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Gus. “Bugger all to do with genes. Manky wee space alien screaming his head off in a hospital blanket. Bang! It was just like someone hit the on-button.” He took a big drink of his wine, and his throat made a dry, sore noise as he swallowed it. “I thought it was only kids that could do that to you.”
I drank every drop of wine in my glass, right down to the specks of black stuff.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.
“You mean… you sort of did love Becky, just not as much?” I asked. “Is that it?”
“No,” he said.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sea, to the wind, to the leaves, to The Big Friendly Giant, to the buzz of the bulb in the orange light above the door. Kept them closed so that I wouldn’t see the world rushing away from me and have to hold on. Anytime I’ve ever been up high looking down, I’ve wanted to jump. Or maybe push someone. How can you not? And that’s what I felt like then. Like I could fall off the shore into the water. Could pull him over with me, drown the pair of us.
“I think you know what I mean,” he said even quieter than before.
He was sitting close enough so I could feel the heat of his body. Except how could the heat of his body jump over two inches of cold October air so I could feel it? It wasn’t that after all. It was just every hair on my arm and my leg all down that side of me, standing up on its own wee goose-pimple mountain, trying to grow long enough to touch him. It was the blood in my brain washing up against that side of my skull trying to float my head over to his shoulder. It was the earth underneath that foot nearest his foot, tilting, hoping to slide my ankle over to twine under his.
“Gus,” I said at last. “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going home, and maybe after Christmas or something, give me a call and we can go out for a drink.” Go out for a drink and never spend another day apart until we die in our bed on the same night when we’ve just turned ninety-nine.
“I’ve got no one, Jessie,” he said. “I’ll never make it to Christmas alone.”
And who did I have? Dot and Steve. Father Tommy and Sister Avril. My brother that screened my calls and pretended he didn’t. My chocolate teapot of a mum. How did I end up with no pals? When did that happen?
“I need a friend,” he said, mind-reading me.
“Friends,” I agreed. I didn’t need any more than that. If I could just see him, feel the ground tilting under my feet, feel all my hairs standing up on end, feel my blood course over to whichever bit of me was nearest him instead of going round and round me like it used to do before he was there, I could wait. I’d rather wait. I’d rather build my reserves for the next bit, in case-like it felt it might-it just plain killed me. Like a frog in a blender. One wild whirl and then gone.
But he stretched his arm up and back and around me and pulled me along the bench. Made me think of those things for shoving chips about in a casino, like you see in films. Or a window-washer’s blade pulling suds off the glass, like you see everywhere. And when he put his mouth close to me to whisper, his breath was hot, sour with the wine.
“I lied about the friends thing,” he said.
It wasn’t really that comfortable, the way he was holding me, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“You need to sleep,” I told him.
“If I put Ruby and Dillon in her room and promise not to lay a finger on you, will you sleep next to me?” he said.
“If you promise,” I said. And he did.
But that was a lie too.
Eleven
Thursday, 6 October
By six o’clock the next morning, when I woke up in the grey light of near-dawn, it all seemed like a dream.
It had started when he put his hand out, feeling for mine, on top of the covers. I’d been lying as far away from him as I could get, but I reached out and grasped his fingers, making my heart rattle high up inside me, really fast, kind of scary.
He took my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles.
“I don’t want to have to go to a church,” he said. For one wild moment I thought he meant a wedding. “Or take whatever minister they dish out at the crem.”
“Was Becky religious?”
“Dunno. We never talked about it. Are you?”
“They tried,” I said. “It didn’t take.”
“I don’t think I could sit through God’s plan and everlasting life and all that. Couldn’t make the kids sit through it.”
“Oh! Are you taking-” I caught my tongue, but not in time.
“Would you?” he said. “Would you not?”
“I really wouldn’t,” I said. “They’re too young.”
“Will you watch them for me then?” he said. “Whenever it ends up being?”
“Course,” I could hardly say no. “And I’ll look up the humanists. That’s the ones you’re after.”
“Cool,” said Gus.
“You won’t be offending anyone, will you?” I said. “Cos you could pick a good bit: let not your heart be troubled. That bit. In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you.”
“Christ, they really did try, didn’t they?” He turned on his side to look at me. “Don’t tell me you know the whole thing off by heart.”
I laughed. “Just the sound bites.”
“But you’re not a big fan?”
“For God so loved the world,” I said, “that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Gus let go of my hand to prop his head up. “That’s exactly what I didn’t want,” he said. “That’s what I just said.”
“I’m agreeing,” I told him. I shuffled round and propped myself up too, even though sitting like that gives me pins and needles in my arm. “That’s why I’m not a fan, is what I’m saying.” He shook his head. “Okay,” I said, “For God so loved the world, right? Pretend you’ve never heard any of it and try to finish the sentence. “For God so loved the world that… ” I waited. “Well?”