Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DOUGLAS
I’ve been in a good mood for two days, and it feels a bit strange.
It’s not that I’m never in a good mood. I am, sometimes.
When the catch is decent and the twins aren’t trying to kill each other and I’ve had more than six hours’ sleep.
But this is different. This is a low hum underneath everything, a warmth sitting behind my ribs that won’t shift.
I keep catching myself smiling at nothing.
Ben noticed this morning. He gave me a look across the deck when I started whistling, because I don’t whistle. Never have. I told him to mind the creels.
Saturday keeps replaying. Not just the kissing—though aye, the kissing replays plenty—but all of it.
The scallops. Ellie in my jacket, tucked against my side on the way back to the harbour.
The way she said goodnight on the quayside, her hand lingering on my arm, both of us stood there like teenagers who don’t know how to end a date.
I was with the twins all day yesterday. Mum and Da had them on Saturday so I could clean the boat and take Ellie out, and I wasn’t about to ask for more.
So Sunday was just me and the kids and no chance to see Ellie at all.
Which was fine. Completely fine. I only thought about her, what, forty or fifty times?
Now it’s Monday afternoon, and I’m walking the twins home from school. Well, not directly home. I thought we might take a small detour.
“This way,” I tell the kids, steering them around a corner.
“We don’t live that way!” Logan says, like I’ve forgotten where our house is.
“We’re going to the library.”
He frowns. “The library? Again?”
“What do you mean, again?”
“We were just there.”
“That was last week. And we’ve got to return Rosie’s rock-pooling book.” I grabbed it this morning before heading out on the boat and slipped it into my bag like it was a perfectly normal thing to do and not a flimsy excuse to engineer a visit to a certain librarian.
“Ellie said I could keep it for three weeks,” Rosie points out. “I don’t have to return it for ages.”
“Aye, but if we keep it for three weeks, we’ll forget about it. Better to return it while we remember. Don’t want you getting a fine.”
“Do libraries give fines?”
“Massive ones. Enormous.”
Rosie narrows her eyes. She doesn’t believe me, and she’s right not to. The library scrapped overdue fines a few years back. But she doesn’t argue with me.
The library is quiet when we arrive. The bell jingles as we push through the door, and Ellie looks up from behind the desk.
She’s in her usual work get-up: oversized jumper, hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Practical. Familiar. But I now know what she looks like with her hair down, soft waves around her shoulders, sitting there in the dim light in that low-cut top, her lips swollen from my kisses, her eyes dark.
She smiles. It’s not her professional “hello, welcome to the library” smile. It’s a different one, just for me.
I smile back. Probably like an idiot.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
I nudge the twins towards the children’s section. “Go on, have a browse.” Then I stroll over to the desk, casual as you like. Or at least, I’m aiming for casual. Not sure my legs got the message.
“So,” I say, leaning on the counter. “Good weekend?”
“Aye, it was great. Had scallops for dinner on Saturday. They were delicious.”
“Funny that. I had scallops on Saturday too.”
Her eyes twinkle. “Really? That is a coincidence.”
“Aye. Yesterday, though, I just had a quiet one. Kept the twins busy.”
This is torture. Exquisite, wonderful torture. I’m standing two feet from the woman I had my hands on forty-eight hours ago, and we can’t talk openly about it because we’re in public and my kids are here. Part of me wants to reach across this counter and—
“I’d like to return this book and take this one out,” Rosie says, depositing two books on the desk with a thud. As an afterthought, she adds, “Please.”
Jesus. Where’d she come from? She’s been browsing for less than thirty seconds. I thought I might get a bit of time to chat with Ellie.
“Sure you don’t want to spend a little longer looking?” I say.
She shakes her head. “Nope. I want this one.”
“You getting a book out?” I ask Logan hopefully. Maybe he’ll take longer to choose.
“Nah,” he says.
Great.
Ellie catches my eye. Her mouth twitches. She checks out Rosie’s book, then the twins march for the door. I follow them, but before I leave, I glance back at Ellie and lift a hand to the side of my head in an I’ll call you gesture.
She gives a small nod.
Later, at swimming, I sit in the viewing gallery while the twins’ lesson gets underway below. The kids are all lined up, and they take turns to push off and kick across.
Logan splashes like he’s trying to empty the pool of water. As for Rosie, when it’s her turn, the instructor has to call her name three times because she’s too busy chatting to one of the other kids.
Ach, well. The way I see it, when they’re at swimming, they’re the instructor’s problem, not mine. This is my chance, so I take out my phone and call Ellie.
It rings. And rings. Then goes to voicemail.
Damn it.
I hang up without leaving a message. A minute later, a text comes through.
Ellie
Sorry, with my mum just now. Can we speak later? x
I stare at that wee x at the end. Funny how such a little thing can please me this much.
Douglas
No rush. Just call when you’re free
After a moment’s hesitation, I send a follow-up message with just one character.
Douglas
x
Ellie calls me thirty minutes later, but by then I’m in a changing cubicle with two soaking-wet seven-year-olds, struggling to get them dried and dressed given neither of them are remotely interested in cooperating.
I have to let it ring out.
Bedtime. The nightly war of attrition.
The twins are wired. Properly wired, with the kind of manic energy that always seems to peak right when I need them to settle. Logan won’t brush his teeth. Rosie can’t decide which story she wants.
Eventually, after humming and hawing for a frankly ridiculous amount of time, she settles on a book about a mermaid, and Logan and I huddle together with her on the bottom bunk for story time.
I’m three pages in before Rosie remembers she got a new book at the library today, and it’s sitting downstairs on the kitchen table. She decides she’d like me to read that one instead.
“Nope,” I say, putting my foot down. “You picked this one. We can read the library story tomorrow.”
Cue tantrum, and cue me folding. Anything for a quiet life.
I go downstairs to get the library book. When I return, they’re both out of bed, Logan spinning in circles to make himself dizzy, Rosie practising cartwheels.
For God’s sake.
And, of course, this is when my phone rings in my pocket. I pull it out. Ellie. It pains me to do it, but I reject the call and shove it away again.
“Who was that?” Logan wants to know.
“No one. Right, you’ve got five seconds to get back in bed, or you’re going to sleep without a story tonight.”
Even after I’ve tucked them in and turned off the light, I have to go back in twice to tell them to stop whispering to each other.
It takes an age for them to drift off, and by the time they’re finally asleep, I’m knackered myself.
My body is crying out for bed, but I head downstairs, lower myself onto the sofa, and call Ellie.
She picks up on the first ring. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi. I thought we were never going to manage a conversation today. So . . .”
“So,” she echoes.
A pause, but not an awkward one.
“Saturday was . . .” Ellie says.
“Aye.”
“I keep thinking about it.”
“Me too.”
“The scallops were really good.”
I grin. “Is that the part you keep thinking about? The scallops?”
“No, that’s not the only part.”
I can hear her blushing. I don’t know how that’s possible over the phone, but I can.
“I loved the whole evening,” Ellie says. “Being out on the water. It was . . . I don’t think I’ve ever had an evening like it.”
“Me neither.”
Another pause, longer this time. I shift on the sofa.
“Saturday was perfect,” Ellie says. “But today . . . it’s funny, isn’t it? We live in the same town, yet it feels like it took us all day to find just a few minutes to talk.”
“Aye. It’s not exactly straightforward, is it?”
“No.”
My chest, which was all loose and light a second ago, tightens up.
“Douglas?”
“Aye?”
“I’ve got an idea, but it’s probably going to sound crazy.”
“Go on.”
“And it’s probably too soon. I know that.”
“Ellie. Just say it.”
For a few seconds there’s only the sound of her breathing. Then, “What would you say about going away for a weekend? Just the two of us.”
I go still. I wasn’t expecting her to say that.
“I know,” she says quickly. “It’s too fast, and we’ve only been on one date.
But I’ve admired you from a distance for a long time, Douglas, and I don’t want to spend the next however long trying to grab ten minutes on the phone at the end of the day when we’re both tired.
I think we deserve a weekend to get to know each other, away from everything.
So, what do you say? Good idea, or too much? ”
My heart is beating fast. A weekend away, just the two of us. The thought is thrilling, but my brain does what it always does: goes straight to logistics.
“Mum and Da already cover weekday mornings, and they step in whenever I need them. Asking them to take the twins for a whole weekend . . .”
“I know, that’d be too much. But Blair and Ainsley did say to me they could help with childcare, and the twins get on so well with Finn, Isla, and Lily. I’m sure we could come up with something so it wouldn’t all fall on your parents.”
“I had Finn and Isla over for a sleepover last year,” I say, thinking aloud. “So maybe it wouldn’t be too much to ask Lachlan or Struan if they could return the favour.”
“Yes!” Ellie says excitedly. “Why don’t I run it by the girls first? They might be more enthusiastic about it than the boys. What do you think?”
I close my eyes. Every instinct is telling me to say no. To be sensible. To put the twins first, to not impose on others, to not want things for myself.
“Aye,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
She lets out a breath. “Really?”
“Really.”
We talk a little longer about the practicalities, our conversation warm and slightly giddy, two people making plans they can’t quite believe they’re making. Eventually, Ellie yawns, catches herself, and apologises.
“Go to sleep,” I tell her. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. Goodnight, Douglas.”
“Goodnight, Ellie.”
The line goes quiet. I rest my phone on my chest and stare up at the ceiling.
I’m going to go away for a weekend with Ellie. Just the two of us.
I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere without the twins.
I genuinely can’t. Every holiday, every day trip, they’re there, which is how it should be.
They’re my kids. But somewhere along the way, I stopped being a person who existed outside of being their dad.
I stopped being someone who went places and did things and wanted things that weren’t about making sure they were okay.
But maybe I’m allowed to have something for myself too.