Kate woke slowly to silence, the mustiness of Bluebell Bank mingled with honeysuckle sweetness drifting through the open window, and the resounding realisation that Ben was a feature of her past and Luke might just be her future.
Dinner had been good; Luke was a decent cook – what he lacked in culinary expertise he made up for in enthusiasm, a certain hearty appeal, and an excellent bottle of Pinot Noir.
He gave a quick tour of the project, shrouded in scaffolding, then settled her in a deckchair in the garden with a large glass of wine. They ate outside – steaks in pepper sauce with lumpy mash and garden peas he proudly claimed were home-grown. Morse, the oldest of the dogs, was content to lie sedately at Luke’s feet, while Caber, who hadn’t quite outgrown puppyhood, ran around the garden barking at sticks.
The conversation moved up a gear, getting close to the important stuff. Luke told her about Louisa, the girlfriend he broke up with before going travelling. Kate told him about Ben. ‘It was over the second I made the decision to come here,’ she said, not wanting him to think the break-up was necessarily to do with him, or that it wasn’t.
Luke just smiled, drank his wine and stroked the furry pile of dog at his feet.
Later, they walked down to the Martyr’s Stake, skirting the spot where they had first kissed. Holding hands, saying nothing. Back at the caravan, they finished the wine, sitting in the deckchairs surrounded by long grass and weeds – which Luke optimistically called his wild flower meadow – and talked about the futures they imagined, in that awkward way of new love, where one tried so hard neither to include, nor exclude, but left a space like a promise in the projected future: a checking of ideals and values, without assuming too much. Luke could see the future only in so far as it concerned the renovation of his father’s house and Kate the opening of the bookshop; beyond that was a question mark.
They did not kiss, save a clumsy brush of lips when they parted. Luke, not quite sure whether to aim for lips or cheek, managed to land somewhere in between. In the brief moment when he was close – the brush of his stubble and soft warmth of his lips – all those feelings long dormant surged to the surface.
It would have been too easy to slip her arms around his neck, to turn the kiss into something. Not yet; she wasn’t entirely sure why she was holding back now. She was still fired with the need to know what had scared him away all those years ago; she wasn’t sure she could move past that moment without an explanation.
Today, Luke was taking her sailing.
Lena was in the garden, her old straw hat bobbing between the leaves of giant rhubarb, visible from the hall window as Kate descended the stairs.
Emily was having tea in the kitchen with Abby. Kate could hear them. Abby was telling Emily that Dan wasn’t himself – he was snappy with her, she was worried he’d lost interest, what with the pregnancy. ‘The baby wasn’t exactly planned,’ Abby was saying. ‘But we were over the moon when we found out …’
Emily was trying to reassure her. Kate imagined Dan was in for a tough conversation with his sister if she caught up with him anytime soon. She shuddered at her part in things and wished she could take it back, whatever she had done to Dan.
Wanting to hide, Kate decided against coffee; she could pick one up in town.
Had she given him hope? She thought she’d been clear. She thought Dan was too, beyond the paranoia of a hangover and the vestiges of feelings resurrected from too long ago. She thought Dan loved Abby, understood that he had made a choice. They both had. But perhaps it wasn’t so simple. How could she put things right?
She walked quickly into town, nursing her vague guilt.
She hadn’t had time to tell Emily about dinner with Luke, or to talk over her confused feelings; Emily had been heading for bed when Kate returned last night and there was a faint air of panic about Bracken permeating the place.
‘I’m sure he’s all right,’ Kate had said as they conversed briefly in the hall on the way to their respective bedrooms.
‘Yeah, it’s not too serious. Mike says we can go and visit him today.’
‘Mike?’ Kate said.
‘The vet.’
‘You’re on first name terms with the vet?’
‘I’ve met him a couple of times. He’s the guy I was playing pool with that night …’
‘This conversation isn’t over,’ Kate said firmly, with a smile, as Emily whisked into her bedroom and bade her a hasty goodnight.
Tomorrow, Kate thought, she’d pick up a nice bottle of red and she and Emily would put the world to rights. They’d talk about Mike and Luke. She was so happy that Emily had something new to focus on, someone who wasn’t Joe.
*
Luke’s brother owned a Wayfarer sailing dinghy – not that Kate had the least idea what that was until she saw it. He arrived to pick her up at the shop. The Ross men had always loved the sea; it was in their blood, coded deep. Luke was the least sea-savvy of them all, but he assured Kate he could handle a sailing boat.
‘My dad bought this years ago and restored it,’ he said, when Kate was positioned gingerly on the wooden seat in her yellow life vest and they were gliding out into the open mouth of the firth. ‘He and Nick used to come out all the time. Do you know much about sailing?’
Kate shook her head, getting used to the lurch and heave of the water beneath her. ‘No, do I need to?’
‘Not really, just follow my lead. It’s a two-man dinghy so I will need your help.’
‘What if I get seasick?’
Luke laughed. ‘You won’t, the firth is calm today and the forecast is OK. Stormy later, but we’ll be back by then. Do you usually get seasick?’
‘I don’t usually go anywhere near the sea.’
For the first couple of hours Kate was concentrating so hard on learning the basics of sailing – trying not to be a hindrance – that there was little time for conversation. Eventually, she relaxed enough to enjoy herself. The sea was splendid: the rise and fall of the waves, the wind tumbling her hair, the cool green water smacking against the hull, and the sun sparking off the firth, changing its colours to teal and slate and ultramarine. The sky was blue, punctuated with soft, foamy clouds.
Luke laughed a little at her inept sailing manoeuvres; his own were fluid and practiced, despite his claim not to have sailed in years. He looked perfectly at home, squinting against the sun and smiling contentedly, the forearm braced on the rudder tanned and muscled beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt. He was clean shaven today and Kate could see his dimples; he looked young and she tried to pretend they were fifteen again and just beginning.
He steered the little boat around the bay to Ardwall, the largest of the islands of Fleet, where he pulled the boat up onto the shore. Kate got out, soaking her plimsolls, and they climbed up towards the old ruined chapel, through brush and bush. She took her shoes and socks off and stretched her legs, wriggling her toes in the grass. Luke took a flask of coffee out of his backpack and held it up with a grin.
‘So,’ he said, gesturing at the isolated island – nothing but ruins and cormorants, rocks and sky. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think it’s beautiful. So quiet. What’s over there?’ She pointed towards the nearest shore where yellow sand glimmered between the rocks and a grey stone building peeped through the trees.
‘Knockbrex, I think.’ His hand brushed her shoulder as he leaned across her to point. ‘There’s Knockbrex Castle. That’s the Carrick shoreline, at low tide you can walk right across to Ardwall.’
‘Have you come here before?’
Luke shook his head. ‘I can’t come here on my own in a two-man dinghy, and Nick and I don’t often sail to romantic spots together.’ Luke’s eyes widened at the implication, but Kate smiled: romantic sounded fine. ‘Dad brought us here once. But it made him sad. I think he used to bring my mother.’
‘It’s a wonder he didn’t move away, when she left. If it made him so sad to remember her.’
‘He was a Solway fisherman through and through. He was bred here and he wanted to die here. That was part of the problem, I s’pose. My mother wanted adventure. He taught me well … no son of his was ever going to get away with not knowing his way around a boat. I don’t get time to sail much. Nick is the real sailor in our family.’
‘He followed your father into the fishing business, was that always his intention?’
Luke leaned back on his elbows, lowering himself onto the rough, tussocky grass. ‘I never had much interest in fishing but Nick always seemed to like it. It worked out fine.’ If he felt any lingering resentment for his father he was careful not to show it. Kate remembered Mr Ross as a remote, frightening man, bowed down by disappointment. He spoke harshly to his boys, when he noticed them at all. She had been afraid of him on the one or two occasions their paths had crossed.
Kate drew up her knees and gazed at the Carrick shore again, strands of hair blowing across her eyes. ‘But you said Nick might move to Italy to be close to your mum.’
‘Yeah, he’s thinking about it. The funny thing about Nick is, he always seemed so much older than me growing up, like he knew everything, and had done everything. Everyone feels like that about their older brothers, I guess. He looked out for me, you know. But he hasn’t really matured any since he was eighteen. I caught up and overtook him. He’s still full of hare-brained ideas and grand schemes. Dad knew that. But, ultimately, it’s Dad’s business – his legacy. I think that will be pretty hard for Nick to leave behind.’
Listening to him talk, Kate felt how deeply – despite their unresolved differences, or because of them? – Luke still missed his father.
‘Lena is ill,’ she said quietly. ‘Her memory’s going. It’s horrible watching someone you love suffer. She won’t get any better, and that’s the worst thing of all, just waiting for it to get worse.’
‘I’m really sorry. I always liked Lena. She didn’t pull her punches, I remember. I was a wee bit scared of her as a boy.’
‘We all were.’ Kate exhaled softly, feeling the weight of her Lena-sadness settle in a familiar lump in her chest. ‘She’s still the same Lena. But she’s also different, and that’s hard.’
‘People change.’
‘Yes.’ She scooped her hair back with both hands and let it fall over one shoulder. ‘I … I didn’t want anything to change here. I came back here counting on that.’
‘But it did?’
‘Yes. Everything looks the same, but under the surface, it’s different.’ She shrugged, shaking off her disappointment.
‘I’m the same,’ Luke said softly. ‘And I’m right here.’ His eyes met hers. He got to his feet and held out a hand to pull her up. ‘C’mon.’ He led her across the narrow island to a promontory overlooking the Irish Sea and they sat side by side on a rock, gazing at Ireland, hazy in the distance beyond humps of rocky islands that made up the most westerly parts of Scotland.
They came upon the moment as they had both known they would. It was natural, a smooth and seamless transition. Luke’s arms around her and Luke kissing her as if he had been doing so every day of their lives. No awkwardness, no uncertainty, just hunger and comfort and reassurance.
Here I am and I am here.
Not everything had to change.
‘I missed you,’ Luke said quietly, when he drew back to look at her, his blue eyes deep and dark as pitch, the pupils so vast they seemed to bleed into the navy irises.
The new world – on the other side of the kiss – was unrecognisable from any they had known; there was no going back now. Kate felt the weight of the realisation.
No one else had ever looked at her with such conviction. ‘I missed you too,’ she replied steadily, while her heart thrummed and the blood pulsed in crazy spikes, and happy chemicals flooded her brain. ‘More than I knew until I saw you again.’
Luke’s voice was soft, husky. ‘I thought about looking you up, but I didn’t think you’d want to see me.’
A little voice at the back of Kate’s head told her to tread carefully; that she didn’t know where she would be come the end of summer and nor did he. He had the house to finish, she the bookshop. He had his brother, she had her life in New York.
To get embroiled with Luke again under a cloud of uncertainty might mean certain heartbreak. He had broken it once already; Kate still bore the old scars and was ready to shatter along old, weakened fault lines.
Was this just a holiday romance? A snatched opportunity to finish what they had once started? Was it worth it to have him only a few short weeks.
Then she looked into his eyes again and knew the terms mattered not at all.
Whatever the complications – even if they were living on separate continents, Kate wanted Luke Ross. She didn’t trouble herself with the details, she just knew it, in every fibre; as if the knowledge of her wanting him had been there all along, woven into her soul since she was fifteen years old.
This moment right now mattered more than all the ones to come and all those behind them; it was the only moment she need concern herself with.
She kissed him some more, wrapped her arms around him and revelled in him, prolonging the sanctity and magic of this minute, this place, for as long as she could.
*
It was with some reluctance that Kate and Luke made their way back to the shore to retrieve the boat and sail for home. There was the sense that leaving this place was a risk; that the fragile spell that bound them on the island might not hold. But Luke had his eye on time and tide; he knew there was rain forecast for the evening and he would prefer to get safely back to dry land before the front moved in. Solway storms could be unpredictable, rising from nothing in a flash.
They sailed across the bay. Back at Isle of Whithorn they loaded the Wayfarer onto its trailer and hitched it to Luke’s truck. They drove home with the windows open, humid air blowing in; the sky darkening behind them and a bank of steely cloud rolling inland from the firth. Layers and layers of cloud, unfurling. ‘See, I said the weather was going to change,’ Luke said.
Kate looked in her wing mirror. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘Well done.’
‘Are you being sarcastic?’ Luke grinned happily.
Kate rested her elbow on the door frame and leaned her head out, letting the breeze tear at her ponytail and pummel her face.
Luke laughed. ‘That’s what Caber does when he sits in the front seat of the truck.’
‘Are you suggesting I have no more sense than your dog?’
‘My dog is very sensible.’
Kate was happy too: the stupid, easy banter with Luke, the sense of rightness about the day. She tipped her head back and smiled, let no doubts creep in to spoil her good mood.
For a while they drove in silence – good silence – but, eventually, they reached the point where a decision must be made and Luke turned to Kate and said; ‘Do you want to come back to the caravan?’
‘I’m hungry,’ Kate said.
‘We can get dinner.’
She nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘What do you feel like eating?’ Kate didn’t care and told him so. ‘I probably have something at home I could throw together.’
Kate looked at him. ‘Sounds good, but after the steak I have high expectations.’
By the time they reached Luke’s caravan, the rain was falling full pelt, puddling unevenly in the yard and muddying the grass. Kate darted across the rain-soaked garden, half laughing and holding her jumper over her head as a shield. Luke unlocked the door, shoulders hunched and rain dripping in his eyes. A furry bundle of sheepdog hurled itself at them, one dog indistinguishable from the other. Kate crouched and attempted to stroke them, but the dogs were much too excited, their exuberant yips and barks ringing out as they shot past Kate and Luke and out into the wet yard with their tails high.
Luke shook his head and left the door ajar for them, rain thundering relentlessly on the tin roof of the caravan. He grabbed a towel from the tiny bathroom and scrubbed it across his wet hair, chucked another to Kate to ring out her ponytail. She hung her wet jumper on the back of a chair. ‘Can I help make dinner?’ she asked, as Luke started pulling stuff out of the refrigerator.
Luke slid a cold beer across the counter to her. ‘Nope. Have a seat. Talk to me.’
Kate closed her hand around the icy bottle. ‘You got an opener?’
Luke passed it to her, watched her break the cap off the bottle. ‘So I couldn’t help noticing, you drink now. You never used to.’
Kate took a sip, bubbles and bitterness melting on her tongue. ‘Neither did you.’ He nodded. ‘It was a childish notion, to blame alcohol itself for my mother’s problems.’ The words got stuck in her throat.
‘I shouldn’t have asked …’
Kate sat on the bench seat. ‘I want to tell you.’ She didn’t want there to be any secrets between them. ‘I realised a long time ago that blaming alcohol for her problems was wrong. Alcohol became her means of coping, but there must have been something else … something she was deeply unhappy about. Something that made her feel she couldn’t live without dulling the pain.’
‘You don’t know?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe one day I’ll be brave enough to find out.’ One day she would finally ask the questions, because one day she would be ready to hear the answers.
‘For me, it was simple. Dad drank to forget my mother. There wasn’t anything deeper or more complex than that.’
‘My mother is complex. I still don’t know what her demons were. Perhaps it was something to do with my … father.’ The word tasted strange on her tongue – he’d never been more than a biological necessity; she didn’t even have a name for him. Perhaps she’d ask that question too. Soon. ‘The thing is, not drinking in case I end up like her will never show me what I am, or what I am not. I would always wonder and always worry. This way I know. I can drink a beer and it’s fine. I’m fine.’ Kate looked up. Luke was staring intently. ‘Sorry,’ she said, frowning. ‘I didn’t mean to be a buzz kill.’
‘You’re not. Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘For opening up. There was a time I didn’t think you would ever would. You were so self-contained and I always wondered why you had to pretend to be someone else.’
Kate blinked. ‘Did I do that? I guess I didn’t know how to be myself. I’m sorry if it felt like I wasn’t real, but what we had – the way I was with you – that was always real to me.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ Luke said gently, and the memory of that dreadful phone call when he had brought both their worlds crashing down around them, hovered between them. ‘I should finish making dinner.’
After they had eaten, they sat side by side on the bench seat, sipping their beer and listening to music and the sound of rain. Talking about their university days and trading stories of silly things they had done.
Kate felt as if she was being led inexorably towards decisions and truths. The urge to ask him to explain was strong, but the urge to finally make love to him was stronger. ‘Luke …’ she began.
‘Yeah?’
Kate felt for the bracelet that usually circled her wrist, but she had removed all traces of Ben. ‘Maybe I changed. Perhaps I grew distant …’
Luke cleared his throat. This was the moment for his apology proper. He needed to apologise, to get that out of the way before things went any further.
They were adults now, with past relationships behind them; they had each tried their hands at loving other people. A wave of longing rolled over Luke and he couldn’t quite force the words past his lips: who wanted to talk of old heartbreak and betrayal on a night made for new beginnings and discoveries?
Instead, he closed the gap between them and cupped Kate’s face in his hands. When his lips met hers she drew him into a kiss that silenced him. She grew more certain with every second and so did her kiss. He ran a hand down her spine, feeling the ridges of bone, splayed his hands on her hips as she raised herself to straddle him, bumping her leg against the table, knocking his head off the window. Neither of them noticed these small hurts.
Kate worked her hands beneath his T-shirt and spread her fingers on the smooth, warm skin of his belly. Luke sucked in a breath and Kate grinned against his lips, swooping her thumb beneath his belt, and he grazed her lip with his teeth as he jerked at her touch. ‘Kate,’ he whispered, disentangling their mouths. ‘Stay.’
Kate pulled back to look at him; he was gazing up at her. She remembered teenage passion, tinged with fear of the unknown, but it was different now; they were adults and they knew what they were doing.
‘Or stop doing that,’ Luke said, as she continued to stroke his stomach. ‘One or the other.’
She nodded slowly, laughing at how nervous she still felt. For answer, she bracketed his face with her hands and kissed him again, then she reached for the hem of her top, pulling it up and over her head in a fluid, defiant gesture.
Luke laughed. ‘Shit, Kate, the window!’ She glanced at the un-curtained window behind his head, the lights of the interior sparkling in every raindrop and their images reflected clearly against the black, her bare skin pearly pale against the dark night. She rolled sideways, ducking out of sight, sprawling on the bench and pulling him with her, legs still tangled.
Luke reached behind him to pull down the blind. Then he shifted position and extended a hand to Kate, pulling her upwards. ‘The bed is more comfortable. Not really comfortable, but better than this bench.’
Kate overtook him to lead him eagerly towards the fold-out bed in the back of the caravan, a dark cocoon-like space that might, in any other circumstance, have seemed claustrophobic. His sheets were creased and clean, and smelled of him.
The terms don’t matter, she reminded herself. Even if this moment is all there is.
But as she lay down with Luke, she knew she was deluding herself; she was already in too deep. She was imagining their tomorrows, a whole lifetime of days stretching out ahead of them: exactly as it was supposed to be.