Chapter Six
Lucas lounged on top of the boat and watched Elle stroll towards him along the curve of the quayside.
Even from a distance he was clonked over the head by the way her legs looked in her very short shorts. Legs that he had in no way forgotten.
Hatless, she reached up and loosened her hair from its ponytail to let it blow behind her as she strolled between the yachts and the gardens that teemed with families now that the sun had lost some of its afternoon savagery. She showed no sign of being aware of how many men were checking out the hot cool blonde as she sauntered by.
He wondered which Elle was heading his way . The poised one? You could take that Elle anywhere from a formal party to a rock climbing weekend and she’d be fantastic. Fun, articulate, quick-witted, alight with laughter.
It was the wary, withdrawn Elle that he found harder to deal with. A hundred times he’d watched her slide from laughing playfulness to grave watchfulness, picking her words as if one bad choice would explode in her face. Hell of a trick to know what was going to kick off the transition, though.
The subject of her ex-husband, Ricky — that he could understand, even if it irked him. People liked to put bad relationships behind them.
His parents? Elle had never dealt well with their habit of holding themselves aloof from those who fell short of their standards. His mother was straight-talking, his father a little chill, but it wasn’t as if anybody had offered Elle money to leave Lucas alone or sent heavies to scare her off. He frowned. His parents hadn’t remotely succeeded in influencing him against Elle but maybe he’d been too dismissive of her anxiety that they would.
And then the subject of marriage had brought out her mild freakiness—
Don’t go there, down that labyrinth of unanswered questions and half-understood baggage.
She was drawing close enough for him to hear her flip-flops on the concrete. Her hair blazed in the sunlight and blew across the shoulders of her deep turquoise top.
‘Hey,’ he called down.
She looked up, shading her eyes. ‘You’re on the flybridge. I haven’t been up there.’
‘Come up now.’ He might have known she’d use the proper name. Most landlubbers would have called it ‘the roof’, but that was Elle: precise.
She disappeared from his view as she approached the gangplank and a few seconds later appeared at the top of the steps. ‘Fantastic,’ she breathed, gazing around at this open-air lounge — if lounges had radar and GPS equipment at the back and a helm at the front.
Lucas lazed along one seat, a bottle of water open on the deck beside him. Elle dropped down on the seat at an angle to his. Her nose was slightly pink and a few freckles had appeared on her cheekbones. She looked familiar yet unfamiliar. ‘How was your day?’
‘Good, thanks.’ He tried to ignore an echo of old conversations, when living with Elle meant something quite different to what it meant now. ‘I was on a dive with my favourite instructor, Polly, and we took four tourists over to Ghar Lapsi, on the other side of the island.’
She turned on the seat and drew up her legs, so that her side rested on the seatback and she could lay her cheek against her knee to watch him as he talked. He kept his own gaze on her face. It would be easy to let it follow the curve of her thigh down into those tiny frayed shorts, but she’d be bound to notice his eyes straying. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. Even more, he didn’t want her to point out that he’d long ago lost the right to take liberties. But his eyeballs felt weighted, straining to shift down so he could just check out—
‘Is diving dangerous?’
He blinked. ‘No, it’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing and follow the rules. It’s a fantastic experience. Most divers are great people to be around.’
He went on talking about Dive Meddi and its clientele of tourists. The Shady Lady rocked peaceably, the breeze whispered in his ears over the background rumble of the traffic.
As he watched, Elle’s hair blew across her face. Her eyelids slid gently shut. Then he was hit by what it was that had seemed so unfamiliar — she was relaxed. No more staring into space and frowning, no more looking away when he caught her looking at him, as if worried that he’d read her thoughts and not liked what he found.
No more evasion.
His stomach curled to remember his casual enquiry about the man he’d seen her talking to outside her workplace, and her stuttering replies. It was no wonder he’d suspected the worst. Her hesitation over marrying him had assumed massive proportions until he was one writhing mass of suspicion. The Incredible Hulk had had nothing on the green monster that had burst out of him, wreaking carnage on their relationship.
She’d flinched as if his words were daggers, panic in her eyes as her expression had flipped through shock, horror and dismay. Then the familiar shutters had come down as he’d given her the ultimatum that had sent them careering to the end of the road.
Charlie had told him he was an arse. Charlie hadn’t believed Elle was seeing someone else. Charlie had offered to talk to Elle to try and discover the truth.
Lucas had bellowed, ‘What would be the fucking point of that? She’s made the truth obvious!’ But his fury hadn’t really been at Charlie. It had been at Elle, and at himself for allowing jealousy to turn his suspicions into disaster.
His parents had been pleased, as if he’d come to see things their way at last. Pride had prevented him from telling them the bleak truth.
Now that he could study Elle unobserved, he found that his major desire was just to watch her sleep, her lips softly parted, her lashes against her cheeks. She had chosen a seat in the shade, under the bimini. But as the sun sank it grasped her in one of its beams. A sheen began to form on her face.
He reached forward and gently pressed her shoulder. ‘Elle? You should probably get out of the sun.’
Her eyes opened, widening as she uncurled, testing her neck as if she’d put a crick in it. Then she gave him a beautiful, brilliant, languorous smile, just as she used to when she was delighted to wake and find herself beside him.
The smile flew like a missile to his chest and burst inside his heart. He couldn’t look away. Couldn’t unlock his eyes from her mouth, which kept on smiling just for him.
For an instant he thought he was going to be physically unable to resist leaning forward and—
The smile faded. Elle’s expression flicked to one of confusion and she scrambled upright. ‘I’ve got stuff to do. Thanks for waking me.’ She yawned as she dropped her feet to the floor, face flushing as she lost a flip-flop and fumbled over retrieving it.
‘No problem,’ he said gruffly, watching her take three attempts to slide her high-arched foot between the straps and beads. With another smile — a small, wary one this time — she disappeared down the steps in the direction of the cockpit.
Lucas sat where he was until normal rhythm returned to his heart.
* * *
When Elle set off for the Nicolas Centre in the morning her step was light. After spending ten minutes learning some more Maltese phrases, she’d spent much of the previous evening on the cockpit seat with pad and pen, insects buzzing companionably around the light as she drew up plans for maximising the efficiency of the computer room at Nicolas Centre. It might not be everybody’s cup of tea because, well, not everyone found IT fun, but to her it didn’t even feel like a job. There might be no huge corporation’s work practices hinging on her actions, and she was used to controlling a budget of considerably more than a few euros, but she was beginning to find making something out of so little a challenge. Bringing order out of chaos was satisfying.
Arriving at the centre, she breezed across the courtyard and past the dry fountain. The door stood open and she was through it and into Joseph’s office in a few steps. ‘Can I talk to you—?’ she began. ‘Oh. Sorry.’
Two men were seated in Joseph’s office. Both rose, and she recognised them as her fellow volunteers from their pictures on the noticeboard in the lounge.
Oscar, the one with sandy hair, was possibly the tallest man Elle had ever met. He seemed entirely made up of gangle. Arms and legs straight, back long, he towered over her.
Dark-eyed Axel, probably of above-average height, looked short next to Oscar. His hair was brushed straight back, accentuating a tall forehead.
‘Well, hi.’ Oscar stuck out a large hand. ‘And you are our new lady, from England.’ He spoke English fluently, though with a breathy Dutch accent. ‘Please won’t you sit?’ He pulled up a chair.
Axel’s German accent was harder and more deliberate, as if he needed to check every word. ‘Welcome to Nicholas Centre.’
Oscar seemed a lot more interested in Elle than in continuing the meeting that had been in progress and led the conversation into a swapping of information about roles and nationalities. She felt uneasily conspicuous under his intent gaze.
In contrast, Axel was quiet. He frowned at Oscar from time to time, as if pained by the Dutchman’s heavy humour and blasts of laughter.
Joseph brought Oscar to a halt. ‘We are discussing the under-11s’ five-a-side football match on Saturday, Elle, but I could meet with you when we’ve finished?’
Elle jumped up. ‘Fine. I’ll go up and start.’
‘But you leave us too soon,’ protested Oscar, patting her chair as if to tempt her to take her seat again.
Ignoring this clumsy playfulness, Joseph fished the computer room keys from his desk. ‘I’ll follow you up in a few minutes.’
Elle ran up the stairs and it wasn’t long before she was engrossed in assessing the router, the speed of the broadband and the various operating systems on each machine, checking out the sizes of the hard drives and how full they were, shaking her head that the machines were automatically logged in and all users had administrative rights. Then, as Joseph hadn’t made an appearance, she signed into her e-mail and found a message from Simon.
From: Simon.Rose
To: Elle.Jamieson
Subject: Forgiven me for my meddling, yet?
Elle,
As I said on the phone, I’m deeply sorry. I see now that I did a completely stupid thing. If you want me to make Lucas quit the boat, I will do. Tell me if you need me to give him shit.
Apart from awkward living arrangements, how are you liking Malta? And how are Loz and Davie? I know you’ll love them.
Much love,
Simon. xxx *penitent face*
Elle replied.
To: Simon.Rose
From: Elle.Jamieson
Subject: Forgiven
Simon,
I think me and Lucas have more or less worked things out and we’re getting along, even if not as best friends. I can’t really feel angry any more as I have learned something from the situation — Lucas has moved on.
She paused, trying and failing to formulate some profound words about acceptance and rite of passage. Eventually, she settled on:
So I can move on, too! ? Sometimes it takes the relationships that don’t last to teach us the lessons that will.
The centre is really interesting and I feel as if I’m doing something that matters a lot more than making money for a faceless corporation that dumped me when I didn’t fit with some precious new structure.
I LOVE Malta. Truly, madly, deeply love it.
Love and hugs,
Elle
She pressed ‘Send’ as Joseph arrived, puffing at the climb up the stairs.
Elle spun her chair around. ‘Is there any prospect of getting better broadband? This is slow enough to embarrass snails.’
Joseph dropped into a neighbouring chair. ‘I can try. Our provider gives us a discount, as a charity. It’s normal practice for me to contact all benefactors from time to time to see if I can encourage them to increase their assistance.’
‘Fantastic. Ask them if we can have at least double the current speed. And do you mind if I format all the machines and set up a limited-access user account for each? Then I can make downloading apps an admin-only privilege. These machines are grinding to a halt under the weight of stuff they don’t need.’
Joseph nodded. ‘All sounds good. Keep me in the loop and give me a note of all passwords. Can you keep some machines available while you make the changes?’
‘I’ll work on one at a time,’ she agreed. ‘Are people allowed to save data directly to the machines? The problem with that is nobody clears out outdated stuff.’
He lifted his hands, looking very Maltese. ‘They shouldn’t. They should bring a memory stick or burn to a disk. But . . .’
‘OK. There are a couple of external hard drives in the cupboard and some old towers, too. I could use their hard drives and add a server to the network. I’ll move any data I find to them, and it’ll provide a place for people to save their stuff if they don’t have a stick or a disk. That should prevent the machines from being clogged up.’
Joseph’s pocket began to ring and he nodded as he fished out his phone. ‘Anything else?’
‘How long will it take Carmelo to get here from his school?’
‘Ten minutes if he runs. Fifteen if he walks.’
‘Thanks.’
As Joseph left, speaking Maltese into his phone, Elle began on the first machine, moving data, formatting the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system.
As she worked, two boys and a girl of sixteen or seventeen came into the room. She smiled and introduced herself and they settled themselves at machines, casting their eyes around at the changes to the layout. They gave their names as Alice, Gordon and Antonio.
Once the machine she was working on was safely formatting, Elle scooted her chair closer to Alice. ‘Need any help with anything?’
The girl dimpled shyly and shook her head. ‘I’m just on Facebook.’
The boys were playing computer games. Elle was fine with that: computers were meant to be used and Alice, Gordon and Antonio were all interacting with technology and the cyber world in their preferred ways.
Because she didn’t want to take more than one machine out of commission at a time and neither Alice, Gordon nor Antonio seemed to have ambitions to conquer spreadsheets or lay out a CV, Elle turned to other tasks.
She cleared up the rest of her e-mail and then began poking around the machine on which she was working. It didn’t take her long to discover that the hard drive had been partitioned.
And one section used for storing pornographic images.
Oh-kay.
She blinked at the first few pictures, all eye-watering but, she was relieved to see, not illegal; then, disquieted by her discovery, protected the area with the caustic password NotCool and shut down the machine.
She went round making the installation of new apps an admin privilege on the machines that weren’t in use, giving the admin user account a new password, FirstSteps . She paused, wondering whether that had sprung into her mind in relation to her first steps in taking control of this chaotic computer room . . . or her first steps in her new life.
Probably the latter. Even though she’d been busy all morning, a part of her mind seemed constantly occupied with Lucas. It was as if sharing the boat had thrown the past four years in the bin. Occupying the same space. Talking together. Feeling his eyes travelling over her like a shiver. Dammit, she’d even woken up beside him yesterday evening.
Her fingers moved over yet another keyboard, but her mind kept floating back to their first meeting when, part of a drunken version of free running through the night-time streets of Northampton, Lucas had literally knocked her off her feet. Elle had been wandering disconsolately through Market Square towards the taxi rank after she and a date had agreed to end the evening early and suddenly men had flooded down the street. Pounding over walls, sliding over car bonnets, hurdling chained up cycles, twenty specimens of stag night manhood. Rat-arsed.
Lucas had lost his tie and two shirt buttons as other racers tried to haul him back. Gasping for breath and choking with laughter, he hurled himself over grey guardrails at the edge of the pavement. Then a competitor crossing his line forced Lucas to alter his trajectory over the top of a bin.
Elle, passing on the other side, found herself bowled over like a skittle, head bouncing on the pavement, legs and knickers flashing.
Lucas rolled to his feet as if landing a parachute jump, abandoning the run to fall to his knees beside her. ‘Are you hurt? Should I get an ambulance?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ Crossly, Elle yanked her skirt to its proper position with one hand and rubbed her head with the other.
His friends returned, solicitous, crowding, offering her, with equal parts enthusiasm and drunken hilarity, piggybacks, fireman’s lifts or consoling cuddles.
‘All I want is a taxi.’ She struggled to her feet, brushing off a forest of helping hands.
Lucas despatched someone to the rank to secure a taxi and before she knew it Elle was crushed in the back seat with Lucas and a beaming bumbling red-faced reveller introduced as Lucas’s brother, Charlie. Sweet Charlie, so unlike Lucas.
‘We’re much nicer when we’re not drunk,’ Charlie confided. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Elle.’
Charlie began to laugh. ‘L for what? L for leather? L on wheels?’ He’d laughed so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.
But Lucas hadn’t laughed. ‘ Elle est jolie, elle est chaude, elle est parfaite .’ His eyes had been fixed on Elle as he’d described her as pretty, hot and perfect. She’d found it hard to look away. In a taxi rocking out of the late-night streets of the town centre towards Upton, where she had a flat, Lucas breathed, ‘ Elle, je veux .’ She, I want.
Lucas returned next day, sober, clutching a huge bunch of fragile pink peonies. He hadn’t forgotten her building, apparently, no matter how drunk he’d been, and had located her apartment by ringing each bell in turn until she answered.
Dark hair glossy, jaw shaved, T-shirt hugging his biceps, Lucas looked a hundred degrees of hot. He stood on no ceremony. ‘How about I take you to lunch?’
It wasn’t in Elle’s nature to be that attainable. ‘I have plans.’ But she gave him a small smile as she took the flowers. ‘Thank you.’
‘Dinner?’
‘Extensive plans.’
He looked exasperated. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Plans . . .’ She let her smile widen to a grin.
‘When?’
She tilted her head, pretending to consider. And then, as his eyes narrowed, capitulated. ‘Tuesday evening could work.’
It had.
Elle completed her task and fished out the key for the cupboard where computers and peripherals went to die, intending to hook up a discarded tower to see if it could be salvaged. It seemed as if the computer room had been run without expertise or common sense, so it was possible that formatting a supposedly defunct hard drive might be all that was needed to make the machine once again a useful member of the IT team.
She tried to concentrate, to ignore the ache in her chest at how good it had been with Lucas before everything had begun to go horribly wrong.
Before the day when a scruffy man she’d taken to be homeless had shaken a cardboard cup in her face, its meagre handful of small change jangling.
And it had been Ricky.
* * *
At twelve-fifteen, out of breath, eyes full of anticipation, Carmelo catapulted into the computer room.
Elle had established that the tower from the cupboard was past resurrection and had moved on to stripping it of its hard drive. She smiled. ‘Hi, Carmelo! Have you enjoyed school today?’
‘No,’ he answered, frankly. ‘But I did go.’ His eyes dared her to query it.
Elle made a cheering motion with clasped hands. ‘I’m really pleased.’
She was rewarded with Carmelo’s smile as she returned the tower to the computer graveyard, in case she ever found its carcass useful. A quick glance at the progress of the machine that was formatting, and then she settled herself at what seemed to be the most recent equipment, and Carmelo pulled up a chair at her side.
‘Right. What shall we do?’
‘Wikipedia,’ Camelo returned, promptly.
‘OK, Wikipedia.’ Elle had expected him to want to play a game or chat on social media. She gave the computer mouse a little shove towards him. ‘Come on then. Show me Wikipedia.’
With alacrity, Carmelo began to click. Elle gazed at the site he opened — Wikipedija. ‘Ah. I can’t read Maltese.’
‘OK.’ Carmelo rapidly clicked through to the English-language version. ‘Now, I think of something I want to know.’ He paused before asking, courteously, ‘Maybe is there something you want to know?’
‘This is your computer time. You choose.’
He nodded. ‘I want to know about qarnita. ’ He screwed up his forehead in concentration. ‘I forget how to say him in English.’
‘How about we open another browser tab and go to a translation site?’
Oscar, the giant Dutchman, wandered into the room. ‘We have our beautiful Englander again!’
Elle merely smiled politely and he went to use the machine that was being formatted.
‘I’m working on that one,’ Elle said, apologetically. ‘Can you use another?’
‘OK,’ he boomed, jovially, as if she’d made a joke.
Then she forgot him as she showed Carmelo how to discover that the English name for qarnita was ‘octopus’ and watched as he put the word into the Wikipedia search engine with a quick cut and paste. Unsurprisingly, she found that he didn’t read English as well as he spoke it and she read much of the Wikipedia article to him, stumbling herself over phrases such as ‘cephalopod mollusc’.
The habits of the eight-tentacled habitué of the seas proved to be interesting, even to her. In fact, she learned, the octopus didn’t have eight tentacles, but four pairs of arms. ‘He has a beak,’ she marvelled.
‘A beak?’ Carmelo frowned.
‘Like a bird. If we open another tab we can look for pictures — click on images, that’s right. There.’
‘A beak, like a bird,’ Carmelo repeated. ‘I like to eat him, the octopus.’
Elle laughed. ‘I might, too, because I like his cousin, squid. In the Italian restaurants they call squid calamari. ’
‘We call him klamari , the same.’ Carmelo tapped klamari into the translation window to prove that the English was given as ‘squid’.
She left Carmelo to his browsing while she installed the operating system on the machine she’d worked on; then password protected it before she shut it down. She didn’t want anyone messing with the machine until she had it how she liked it. She designated it number 01 and wrote a sticky label for the tower.
‘I’m going now,’ she said to Carmelo. ‘What about you?’
Carmelo’s shoulders slumped. ‘You go home?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning, but I have to work somewhere else this afternoon.’ She watched a thoughtful look enter his eyes, and added, ‘Would you like to help me with some jobs on Saturday? You can if you go back to school tomorrow.’
‘Only if I go to school?’
She pulled an apologetic face. ‘Yes. Joseph needs you to go to school, so I have to know that you’re going. What if he wouldn’t let me work here any more?’ It seemed an unlikely result of her not taking a stand against truancy, but Carmelo heaved a martyred sigh.
‘OK.’
Oscar rose from his machine. ‘I’ll walk with you. Make sure you know your way.’ He smiled a smile large enough to fit with the rest of him.
‘I already know my way and I need to talk to Joseph first. But thanks anyway,’ Elle answered lightly.
She left Carmelo studying Wikipedija and ran downstairs to leave the computer room keys with Joseph. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow morning to take the workshop. Do you know how many have signed up?’
Joseph shrugged. He looked tired. ‘About eight, but the way a drop-in centre works, that means between two and twenty.’
‘I’ll take the session as it comes, then.’ Elle paused. ‘Carmelo seems a bit of a waif.’
Joseph rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. ‘Yes. His family are not well-off.’
She hesitated, hoping she wasn’t overstepping any marks. ‘I was thinking about his clothes . . .’
She didn’t need to finish. Joseph was already nodding, his dark eyes full of compassion. ‘He’s one of the children who shies away from accepting anything from the donated clothes rack. The children with the least sometimes have the greatest amount of pride.’
Elle nodded. She’d thought it might be the case.
She paused again, even more reluctant to bring up the next subject. ‘By the way, someone’s been downloading, um, adult material, to at least one of the computers.’
Joseph heaved a huge sigh. ‘Damn.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you what kind of adult material? Not something the police would be interested in?’
‘I h-hope not! At least, I don’t think so. I only looked at a few pictures.’ She felt her colour rising. ‘And they were just . . . just adult. Nothing criminal.’
Relief chased away anxiety on Joseph’s face, swiftly succeeded by embarrassment. ‘I suppose this isn’t going to sound very good but I have to look at it.’
Elle laughed, not sure whose face was burning hottest. ‘Yes, I, um, suppose so. I password protected it, so I’ll write down the details for you.’
‘Thanks for thinking of that.’ He pushed a pad towards her and she wrote quickly, with a note of which machine was affected.
Elle left his office and the centre gladly. She was no prude but felt awkward discussing the presence of porn with Joseph, a man she was still getting to know, and she didn’t have his foothold in Maltese culture or know its boundaries in terms of offence.
Emerging through the front door and into the sunlight was a bit like stepping too close to a fire. She stopped, scrabbling her hat out of her backpack, unable to fully open her eyes against the glare until she’d pulled it on. Then she crossed the courtyard and let herself out of the door in the wall and into the comparative comfort of the shady side of the street.
‘So, we go the same way,’ said a voice, as she rounded the corner where the street jinked to the right.
Elle started, and then tried to pretend she hadn’t as Oscar loomed beside her. ‘Really?’ She hoped she sounded politely disbelieving rather than jumpy. It wasn’t his fault he towered over her but Elle couldn’t help shrinking away, perhaps because he wasn’t the greatest respecter of personal space, always a bugbear of hers. Nor, evidently, had he respected her polite rebuff over walking her home.
She could insist on him stating his destination, she supposed, so that she could declare her route to be different, but she had the feeling that that would only lead to him dropping any pretence and declaring his interest. And his interest was already pretty obvious in the way he let his eyes roam over her — obvious verging on creepy.
‘Right,’ she said, discouragingly, and set off down Triq Bonnard.
He matched his long stride to her shorter one. ‘So, our new volunteer, you like it here in Malta? You usually live in England, yes?’
When she returned only minimal answers, he turned to talking about himself.
‘I am from the Nederlands, from Freisland. Not Holland! That’s what all English people think, that the Nederlands are Holland.’ He laughed heartily. ‘But North and South Holland are only two of our provinces. Friesland is a province, too, right up in the north. Even some Dutch people, now, call the Nederlands “Holland” but I am proud to be a Freislander. Like you, I am a volunteer, helping some young people and enjoying some sunshine.’
Nodding politely, Elle followed her usual route towards the marina.
‘And you,’ Oscar continued, keeping pace up and down kerbs, falling in behind her when cars parked half on the pavement, ‘you are here to make our computer room good.’
It didn’t seem as if he was going to abandon the conversation just because she wasn’t taking part in it, so Elle agreed, ‘That’s right.’ She halted, spying a neighbourhood shop on a corner. ‘I’ve just remembered that I need some shopping. I’ll see you next time we’re both at the centre.’
Oscar wasn’t to be so easily put off. ‘I am in no hurry. I will come and hold your basket.’
Hiding growing irritation, Elle looked up at him coolly. ‘Some things, a woman prefers to buy alone.’
‘Ah.’ Oscar looked satisfactorily nonplussed.
‘See you some other time.’ Maybe it would have put him off more permanently if she’d let him accompany her while she stocked up on tampons, but Elle was happy just to skip into the shop and take her time over studying available brands of shampoo and conditioner.
When she emerged once more into the brightness of the afternoon the street was empty and quiet, as if the beating sun had sent everybody indoors. Elle was glad of her hat and paused in the shade of the shop’s awning to search out her sunglasses, then stepped back onto the pavement and turned towards the marina.
Like an annoying stray, Oscar emerged from a shady doorway. ‘I will carry that for you.’ He whisked the bag out of her hand. His head was bare even in the afternoon sun, and his sandy hair lifted in the slight breeze.
‘There’s no need—!’ But seeing the futility of attempting to reason with him Elle reluctantly turned for home, having little choice but to listen as Oscar went on about his previous voluntary posts in Morocco and Thailand. She felt like a cat that was having its fur brushed the wrong way. No matter how short her replies, Oscar seemed to have no compunction in pushing his presence upon her. Counting silently to ten, Elle reminded herself that Oscar was a fellow volunteer and they might have to work together for months. In the interests of harmony she should maintain at least neutral relations, even if he did seem too thick-skinned to realise when a girl wasn’t into him.
As they came to Triq Manoel de Vilhena, the street that came out almost opposite the bridge, Elle made to retrieve her shopping with a cursory, ‘Thanks.’
Oscar retained possession by the simple expedient of hoisting the bag out of her reach. ‘It is a good gentleman who carries shopping for a lady. To her door.’ And stood on the kerb to await a break in the swarming traffic. The heat certainly wasn’t keeping car drivers at home. Maybe they all had air conditioning.
‘So, you have been fiddling with the machines.’ He said it as if Elle was a child who had done something wrong.
She glanced up into his red, shiny face. Perspiration was dampening his hair and running down his temples. ‘Formatting them, you mean?’
He laughed. ‘Why, yes!’ He laughed again. ‘But we all use the computers. Perhaps you should have spoken to us before making changes. We might have wanted the opportunity to change things ourselves.’
‘I’m doing what I’m here to do.’ But Elle pricked up her ears, interested in what lay behind his overly casual manner. The traffic thinned enough for them to cross the road, dodging the cars that whizzed on and off the forecourt of the garage near the kiosk.
‘What has happened, then, to our files and folders?’
‘I saved them onto the external hard drive and I password protected a folder that contained images unsuitable for children.’ They were making their way along the pathways that threaded through the gardens, now, where there were patches of dappled shade. Elle could see Lucas standing on the bathing platform of the Shady Lady , his head turned in her direction as she approached.
Oscar made a pshaw noise. ‘Where males are you’ll find these things. It is normal.’
She halted. Her stomach contracted. If it wasn’t some naughty adolescent who had downloaded the porn she’d found that morning, that put things in quite a different light. ‘What if a child had opened that folder? It didn’t even have a password. I’m not up on Maltese law but I’m pretty sure that storing explicit images on machines used daily by children must contravene it. Just in case common sense and decency doesn’t prevent adults from downloading stuff like that.’
Again with the pshaw , but louder. ‘We are human.’
They were back in the full sunlight of the marina access road, almost at the Shady Lady , now. Lucas, unmoving, still watched.
‘It’s irresponsible,’ she maintained. She was relieved to reach the boat, even glad to see Lucas. If Oscar had been making her uneasy before, he was positively making her skin crawl now. ‘My shopping, please.’
Immediately, Oscar swung it out of her reach again, with that maddeningly wide grin. ‘But I am being a gentleman. And soon, perhaps, you will be a lady and provide me with a nice cool drink to say thank you. That will be kind.’
‘You OK, Elle?’ asked Lucas, his voice cutting through the heavy afternoon air.
Oscar lowered the bag, glancing at Lucas as if suddenly putting two and two together. ‘This is where you live?’ He looked at the boat.
‘Yes.’ She pulled at her bag, but he kept a firm grip on it.
‘Who is this man? You have a boyfriend?’ His tone was accusing, as if she had no business having a boyfriend.
‘We live together,’ she snapped.
Lucas’s eyebrows lifted a fraction.
‘So.’ Oscar nodded slowly. For the first time that afternoon, he didn’t smile. ‘So you have a boyfriend.’ He let the plastic carrier bag untwist from his fingers.
Elle snatched back her shopping and when Lucas held out a hand to steady her aboard the boat she grabbed it thankfully, welcoming the show of solidarity. She didn’t resist when Lucas pulled her in to his side. It felt safe.
Slowly, Oscar began to back away. ‘I will see you soon, Elle. At the centre.’
‘Right,’ she returned, woodenly.
Together, they watched Oscar walk up the quayside then turn and disappear from view between the toilet block and the kiosk.
‘Who was that charming man?’ Lucas’s tone was dry.
‘He’s one of the volunteers at the centre. I only met him for the first time today. I didn’t take to him.’ Elle was very aware that Lucas still held her hand. The obvious thing was to free herself, but the feel of his fingers around hers was comforting — if uncomfortably hot. For several unsettling moments she felt as if his pulse became hers.
‘He looked kind of fond of you.’
She nodded, still thinking about their hands. Touching. But neither of them mentioning it.
‘He seems to have taken a shine.’
‘Is he a problem?’
She pulled a face. ‘I hope not. I have to work with him.’
Lucas studied her for a moment and then changed the subject. ‘Loz wandered past, asking for you.’ He turned towards the saloon, which meant that the unlinking of their hands happened naturally, casually.
‘Thanks. I’ll be heading her way in a few minutes.’ Then, because Elle was glad that Lucas had helped her out with Oscar, and because they were stuck with the current living arrangements for the summer, she offered impulsively, ‘I’m planning to eat aboard, this evening. Want to join me?’
He took a moment to turn the idea over. Then, gruffly, ‘Thanks. I’ll supply the drink.’
She showered and changed, reassuring herself that she’d done the right thing, that it would show how over each other they were if they could share a meal together and be civilised. Remembering all the meals they’d eaten together in their old home, at the homes of his parents, her parents, Simon, Charlie, their friends, their colleagues, at restaurants, in bars, on picnics. And trying not to.
* * *
It was almost a relief that when she stepped back aboard much later that afternoon that Lucas was nowhere to be seen. After yet another shower and change, she began washing salad leaves and big beef tomatoes, slicing up crusty Maltese bread and spreading it with butter, rolling up pink glistening slices of ham to place appetisingly on the plates.
Then she felt the slightest dip of the boat and looked along the deck to see Lucas on board, a bag cradled in the crook of his arm.
‘We could eat on the flybridge.’ He raised a questioning eyebrow.
She answered lightly. ‘That would be fun. A curious cross between picnicking and doing things in style.’
At least it seemed stylish to her to be perched up at the little table on top of the boat as evening cast lengthening shadows. The golden sun reaching beneath the bimini felt gorgeous on Elle’s bare arms and legs now that it had lost its earlier scorching intensity, and the flybridge caught the breeze though it was only feet above the blue and glittering sea.
The usual stream of cars grumbled along the road. ‘What’s that way?’ Elle nodded at the road leading in the other direction from Sliema as she uncapped a bottle of cold water.
Lucas held out his glass. ‘Msida’s just around the coast. You can either follow the Ta’ Xbiex seafront road round to it or cut across the promontory. There’s another marina there, and a big residential district. If you carry on, past Pieta and through Floriana, you get to Valletta. The water taxi whizzed us between the two but it takes a lot longer by road.’
They sat down to dinner together at the table. Relaxed evening meals crowded into Elle’s memory: smiling, eating, talking. Kissing. In those days, Lucas might have pulled a face at the leafy salad she’d produced, but now he accepted the meal with polite thanks.
His contribution was wine from the local Marsovin vineyard and, after the main course, a lavish lemon gateau he’d stowed in the flybridge fridge, part of a unit that included a grill and a tiny sink.
Elle laughed. ‘Do the Maltese produce many desserts like this?’
Lucas filled her wine glass and replaced the bottle in its cooler. ‘I don’t think you have to worry about calories. You look thinner than when I last saw you.’
She dropped her eyes. The last time he’d seen her she’d been clearing her stuff out of his house — he’d arrived home unexpectedly and watched her with bleak dark eyes as she’d stumbled and fumbled her way through boxes and bags, stuttering about quite understanding that he wanted out, and it being better this way.
Because it had been; better for him and better for his parents.
The memory diminished her appetite and she left more than half of her portion of gateau. Lucas, who was scraping his fork around his plate, raised his eyebrows and Elle found herself pushing her leftovers to him in an echo of old behaviour. As he industriously set about clearing her plate, she let her head tip so that she could look up past the hoop where a cluster of boxes sat beside two sleek silver horns, all related to the GPS and television and other stuff she didn’t need. The sky had turned a luminous purple ready for nightfall. ‘I may have a bit of a situation with that guy, Oscar. I found a porn stash on one of the computers and he said things that make me think it’s his.’
Lucas paused, fork poised. ‘What sort of things?’
‘That it’s perfectly natural and people are human. I don’t know if I ought to say something to Joseph, the centre manager. I’d assumed it was the kids but Oscar’s a youth leader.’
‘Tricky.’ Lucas sat back, checking Elle’s legs weren’t in the way before he stretched his out. ‘Could you point out to the centre manager that it could be anyone with access to the computers, including volunteers? Let him see the danger without pointing any fingers. It’s not your responsibility to prove anything.’
She watched him use his fingertip to wipe up a last smear of cream from the edge of the plate and put it to his mouth. ‘You ought to have been in law, like your parents.’ And then, when he didn’t respond, added, ‘How are they? Dad still a magistrate? Mum a lawyer?’
He smiled, guardedly. ‘That’s right. No significant changes.’
She looked over to the boats moored on the Manoel side of the creek, some of them huge, looking worth every one of the millions of pounds on their price tags. The wine reached her head in a slidey little rush. ‘I think law would have suited you and your love of what’s right.’
‘From what I understand,’ he said, slowly, ‘the law isn’t so much about right and wrong as what evidence you have and whether you can prove your case. Not always the same thing.’
He glanced down at the two empty plates as if regretful that his sugarfest was over. ‘Your own parents — I was surprised when you mentioned that they’re not together.’
‘Dad completely reinvented himself. Left his boring job and went into business with his new wife in a B&B in west Wales, where the surfies hang out.’
‘Were you shocked?’
‘Yes,’ she said, simply, ‘Shocked. Astonished. Ambivalent. All the things adults seem to feel when their parents part. Mum took it hard. Really hard. It shook her confidence.’
He lifted his brow. ‘That’s hard to imagine. Is she still in sales? Or has she retired?’
Elle yawned, feeling the soporific effects of the alcohol and the day’s sun creeping up on her. She’d hardly slept out of excitement on her last couple of nights in England and now with the strain of finding Lucas on the boat and starting what amounted to two part-time jobs, her body was beginning to demand sleep. ‘Mum’s in a home.’ She yawned again, behind her hand. ‘Not long after Dad left, she had a stroke. I don’t know if you remember that she’s eight years older than him? But, still, quite young to have a stroke. Now she can’t live independently. She was alone when the stroke hit and so a lot of damage was done.’ She drained the last of her wine and sighed. ‘She doesn’t always know who I am so I don’t suppose she knows who Dad is or that he left her.’
His voice was soft, sympathetic. ‘That’s bad. I had no idea.’
‘Why should you?’ The words hung in the air like the ghost of an accusation.
‘You’re right, why should I?’ His eyes began to glitter in the last of the light. Like the creek, they were black and shining, reflecting the lights in sparks of gold. ‘I didn’t know that much about you when we were together so why should I know anything about you since you left?’
Brushing away the encroaching fug of fatigue, she climbed to her feet and began to stack the plates and the salad bowl. ‘You left.’
She started towards the head of the steps but suddenly his hand was on her arm, hot, hard, as he swung her around. The plates spun from her hands and clattered to the deck, scattering scraps of lettuce and chopped peppers.
‘I left?’ he barked. ‘You were the one who cleared her things—’
She yanked her forearm free from the crackle of his touch. ‘You left the relationship. I left the house because it was yours and once you’d ended things I could hardly stay, could I?’
As he began to speak, she lifted her hands, weariness pinching at her tear ducts until she was frightened that they’d overflow. She was suddenly desperate not to cry in front of him. ‘Let’s not argue, Lucas. We’ve both moved on. Let’s not allow bad memories in. They’ll rock the boat.’ She forced a smile to support her feeble joke. He didn’t smile at all.