Chapter 16
Jameson tells me Alex’s story somewhat reluctantly, and I promise to keep it to myself.
He’s worked hard to turn things around, Jameson says.
Which is why it’s so gutting that he’s throwing it all away now.
The life Alex described to me back in my flat on Hogmanay was fiction – the life he hoped for rather than the one he was living.
He did have a graphic design job, until the drinking and drugs got out of control. He’s been clean for four months and he’s been trying to get work, but it’s hard with a stint in rehab in his recent past.
He’s been clean until now.
It makes sense: the way he warred with himself over the single dram he poured at New Year, staring at it but never drinking. He was testing himself. He didn’t drink the wine the next time he came to my flat either, though he let me pour it.
‘I think he and Becca might have been smoking weed on the terrace earlier too,’ Jameson says.
‘I don’t know why he’d throw it all away on one party.
But maybe this has been harder on him than he expected – being back at Tarnmore, reliving everything.
He always felt responsible for what happened to Gen …
for giving her those pills. Don’t tell him I told you about the rehab.
He might not mind you knowing but he’d hate to lose face with the others. ’
I mime zipping my lips. I can tell that Jameson cares about Alex, has been through the mill with him.
The moment feels ripe for confession and I end up telling Jameson about the holes in my memory from the night Gen died – Alex already knows so there doesn’t seem much point keeping quiet. I confide too my inability to go back in the water, the fact that I haven’t swum a stroke since that night.
Everything changed for me that night. I’ve never been sure if I’ve fully recovered, if I’ll ever be the same person I was before West Sands.
The way my mind has suppressed the memories of the night, I’d guess not.
‘I can’t set foot in St Andrews either,’ I say.
‘I wish I could.’ I’d love to find closure retracing our teenage footsteps down South Street, through the ruins of the abbey, down the vast stretch of West Sands towards the deadly estuary that claimed my best friend.
Jameson reaches across the table and gently takes my hand again and the gesture steals my breath.
I stare at him: his dark eyes, the curve of his lips.
Something in his expression has cracked me open, when I believed I was forever closed.
But I don’t know if it’s really Jameson I’m hankering for, this grown-up version of him, or if I’m yearning for the me I used to be – the girl who gave her heart unreservedly to this boy.
We change the subject again and talk about our hobbies to lighten the mood.
I tell him about my kickboxing and he grins and says he’d love to see me kick someone’s ass.
He speaks about climbing the same way I talk about getting on the mat – reverential, like it’s the only time he finds true peace.
With the scent of pine forests in his nose and the scrape of rock beneath his palms, utterly alone, is when he comes alive.
‘You should come with me sometime,’ he says.
‘I’d love to take you climbing – I’d take care of you, I promise. ’
I know he would. He always took care of me – of everyone. Which is why it never made sense, that kiss in a seedy bar …
I try not to dwell on that, and instead picture us on some remote mountain summit, on top of the world.
I don’t want the night to end now that it’s just me and Jameson and everything is so easy between us, but eventually it grows so late as to be early and we make regretful noises about needing to get some sleep. ‘We should take a walk tomorrow,’ Jameson says. ‘If there’s a break in the weather.’
I nod shyly. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more. Our chairs scrape on the flagstones as we stand simultaneously. Our eyes meet and my cheeks heat as I imagine climbing the grand staircase beside him, reaching the parting of the ways, the point where we must separate … or not.
Jameson saves us from a rash decision by turning to the sink. ‘You head on up, I’ll just wash our mugs. Goodnight, Eilish.’
I’m smiling as I make my way up the kitchen steps and through the hall and embark on the stairs, too distracted to worry about shadows and shapes or even the creepy skull.
When I spot a human shape on the landing above me, I think it must be my imagination, but then the shape moves, and I see the shrinking glimmer of a door closing.
That’s Becca’s room – the one she uses when she stays in the main house.
But the figure in the hallway is too large to be Becca. Besides, I catch a glimpse of her in the dwindling light – the gold gleam of an exposed shoulder, the teasing flash of her grin. The figure moves away from the door as Becca softly closes it.
I shrink into the darkest corner of the landing.
As the figure passes along the landing above, they are momentarily caught in the light from the cupola – the snow-light creating a false dawn.
They don’t look down, don’t see me pressed into the shadows.
When the light washes over them, I recognise the blue sweatshirt, the white writing … St Andrews University.
Alex’s hoodie, a souvenir. I noticed him wearing it earlier.
Why would Alex be leaving Becca’s room in the middle of the night?
And why would she be half naked in the doorway bidding him goodnight?
It seems Jameson and I are not the only ones feeling the pull of old connection. Poor Euan: he doesn’t deserve to be taken for a fool.
Once I’m sure Alex must have made it along the corridor to his room, I scurry up the final flight to my own. I stumble inside, making a mental note to fix the damn rug that curls and catches the door and my toes again. Tomorrow. I’ll take care of it tomorrow. I’m too sleepy now.
Yawning, I shed my robe, plug in my phone, and slip into the cosy bed. Moments later, I am asleep, dreaming of Jameson.
*
When I wake, the room is filled with natural light and the air is frigid. I’m a bit fuzzy but not too hungover. Jameson and I stayed up until after 4 and it’s now – I reach for my phone, noting the depleted battery – just after 10 a.m. I’m sure I plugged the phone in to charge last night.
I follow the trail of the charging cable. Plugged in, switched on, but nothing’s happening. I try the bedside lamp, only for it to click uselessly.
We have no power.
The duvet is cosy, and it’s an effort to leave it, particularly when the room beyond the bed is so cold.
I wrap myself in the robe again and go to the window, peering through layers of condensation and mist. Beneath me the gardens are stunning, cloaked in skeins of snow.
In the distance, the tips of the pine trees press into mallow-soft clouds.
The hill the boys hiked that long-ago April weekend is wreathed in mist, summit shrouded.
For now, the snow has stopped and the landscape is postcard pretty.
Jameson and I might get that walk after all.
I wonder if the loch is frozen, folds of snow draping the banks where Jameson and I sat, wrapped in each other and swigging Champagne from the bottle. It might be nice to revisit some old haunts if we can get out and explore a bit.
I find myself hoping it will be just the two of us who feel like a walk.
When I emerge from my room, the house is icy.
The grandfather clock in the lower hall ticks rhythmically and the stairs beneath my feet creak.
I dart under the stag and through the empty foyer, follow my nose to the kitchen.
Smells of coffee and bacon drift up the steps to meet me – the blessing of an Aga that keeps going through a power cut.
The sight that greets me is homey: Becca, Leo, Alex and Kimmy are gathered at the refectory table drinking coffee from earthenware mugs, all wearing various iterations of nightwear.
Jameson – in frankly adorable Nordic pyjama bottoms – is helping Euan at the stove.
Jameson catches my eye, bites his lip. I try not to notice the way his T-shirt stretches across his chest.
Euan is fully dressed, his boots by the door after presumably trekking across from the cottage this morning. He and Jameson pile sizzling bacon and fluffy mounds of scrambled egg onto sourdough toast, and pass out the plates. My mouth waters.
‘There she is,’ Alex says warmly. He gets up to hug me.
I flush at the memory of seeing him sneaking out of Becca’s room in the middle of the night but hold the knowledge close.
It’s not for general consumption. I hug Alex back, a little wary after all the twists and turns of last night.
Jameson catches my eye again, brushes my shoulder as he hands me my plate and a shiver of intimacy darts down my spine.
‘Thanks.’ I sit at the table beside Leo, who is reading yesterday’s newspapers, pages strewn across the table.
‘Good morning, Eilish,’ says Becca, plunging a fresh cafetière.
‘Did you sleep well? Don’t worry about the power outage.
It’s just the weather. Euan will have the generator up and running in no time.
Won’t you, babe?’ She leans back in her seat, stretching like a cat and catching Euan’s hand as he moves past her with his plate of food.
I watch her arch her spine in search of a kiss.
The one Euan drops onto her lips seems perfunctory at best. I wonder if he’s pissed off that she didn’t go back to the cottage with him …
Or does he know about her and Alex?
Becca twirls her fingers in the front of Euan’s flannel shirt, and he kisses her again before extricating himself. ‘I’m hungry, Bex. Let a guy get his breakfast, eh?’
Becca pouts. ‘Men and their stomachs,’ she says to no one in particular.