Stonemouth (44 page)

‘Well, there was that time in London when you came to stay at
my place. You seemed, kind of…interested, then? In me? In us fucking?’

‘Maybe you remember it different from me.’

‘Maybe. But not that different.’

‘You do flatter yourself sometimes, don’t you, Stu?’

‘So you didn’t really want to? I completely misunderstood you sliding a hand into my pants and lip-chewing my ear?’

‘Oh, there might have been a sort of transferred urge. That other guy, Brad, he turned out to be useless, remember? And maybe there was sort of an experimental thing, too? To see what Ellie had been getting all those years, sort of level-up with her? Just cos the opportunity had presented itself; not something I’d planned for or anything? And, frankly, if this is what you’re really like, then I’m
really
glad now it never happened. You did notice I didn’t exactly stalk you after that? Honestly, Stu, you’re not that…addictive. What makes you think I’m into older men anyway?’

‘Okay. Forget the motivations. Just tell me: is it true? Did you set up the thing with the cameras?’

‘No. And don’t be ridiculous.’

‘That your final answer?’

‘Yes. You’re fantasising.’

‘I don’t think I am.’

‘Well, I don’t believe I care what you think any more, Stewart. So, we done here? That your moment over? I’m sure I have better things to do.’

‘Sorry to have wasted your time.’

‘Yeah, sure you are.’ There’s a pause. ‘But, actually, no. No. If I can join in on this open-mike fantasy session you’ve got going here, why not think about it being about me trying to stop Ellie being happy, because I just didn’t like her? Didn’t like her easy way with everything, the way everybody said she was the pretty one, the way she could just do what she wanted and have who she wanted and never,
ever
realise how lucky she was, how privileged, how spoiled? Maybe it was all about teaching her a lesson. Maybe it had nothing
to do with you at all, Stewart. Maybe you were just, like, collateral damage? Maybe you were just used. Maybe you were just a tool.’

I hear her take a breath, waiting for me to answer, but I keep quiet.

‘Yes? No? Plausible to you? Or not ego-massaging enough? Or it could have been Ellie, you know? Maybe she just got tired of you and wanted a plausible way out where she’d look like the victim? Maybe Jel was just doing her a favour, or El had something over her. No? That not acceptable either? Okay, here’s another thought. Maybe it wasn’t my idea in the first place; maybe I only helped a little, did what I was asked to do and was proud to be part of the family team for once, just following orders? Maybe it was Don. Maybe he set you up because he didn’t trust you, because he didn’t want somebody like you marrying into the family, somebody he didn’t understand who wanted to be a fucking
artist
and talked all this weird hippie bullshit about worshipping truth or whatever the fuck? Maybe you just failed the audition, Stu, and this was Don’s way of getting you out of the picture, even if it broke Ellie’s heart. Maybe all that, Stu. Maybe you should think of all that, if we’re entertaining all the possibilities, even the crazy ones. Getting caught with your pants down in a toilet stall by a little kid too fucking inglorious for you? Has to be a conspiracy, yeah? Fucking grow up, Stu.’

The phone goes dead. Then, a few seconds later, the screen lights up again, and it’s Grier’s number.

I put the phone to my ear and draw in a breath but she gets there first. ‘And
don’t
call me back!’

Dead again. Properly dead, too; no battery left. Oh well.

There’s a bit on the beach that’s just right for a swim, Ellie says, casting a knowing eye over the way the breakers are falling across low sandbanks and shallow channels, fifty metres out. To me, it looks just the same as all the other bits of beach and sea.

‘This where you usually swim?’ I ask her.

‘There’s
no usually,’ she tells me. ‘Just wherever the waves are right. Changes every tide with how the sand lies. Today, here’s good.’

We take her word for it and hunker down on the dry sand with some blankets and towels and two cooler boxes full of soft drinks, wine and beer.

We’re about thirty or forty metres down the beach, more or less level with the broad, shallow slipway that marks the end of the Promenade; Olness golf course starts a little further on. Yarlscliff and Stoun Point are visible to the south through the slight remaining haze. Vatton forest, an hour’s brisk walk away in the opposite direction, remains invisible in the greyness; it would be only a dark line smudged across the northern horizon even on a clear day. The roll of cloud offshore seems to have dissipated into the pervading mistiness still covering beach and town.

Ellie drops the towels, looks at us all sitting on the blankets. ‘Really? Nobody else coming in?’

The onshore breeze might have slackened a little, but it still fills the air with the sound of the surf breaking all along the great multikilometre reach of this wide east coast, making everything that everybody says seem somehow distant, submerged within the vast white-noise shush of the sea.

‘Think you’re on your own,’ I tell her. I pick up the towels, drape them over the arm already carrying her jacket.

‘Looks a bit cold,’ Jel says. She appears tiny in a big green waxed jacket she picked up in the back porch; one of her dad’s.

Ryan looks like he’d happily volunteer to go in with Ellie, skinny-dipping if necessary, but can’t bring himself to say it.

‘We’ll just watch you,’ Phelpie says, with what might be a leer. He pulls the tab on a can of Irn Bru.

‘Yes. Do try not to drown,’ Ferg tells her, rummaging through one of the cool boxes, probably looking for the drink with the highest ABV.

Ellie is putting on a Day-Glo-yellow bathing cap, tucking her hair up into it. ‘I’ll try,’ she says.

‘I
can life-save,’ Ryan blurts, holding up one hand, then immediately looking like he’s regretting it. Ellie just smiles tightly at him. He looks round at the rest of us. ‘El taught me,’ he says, voice dropping away.

‘Right, be good,’ El says, addressing all of us, and – with a last smile to me – turns to the sea.

She walks, then jogs away across the sands: poised, elegant, gazelle-graceful, the whites of her soles pale flashes against the sand and the honey tone of her calves and thighs. She splashes into the first shallow pools, pads across a sandbank, negotiates a deeper pool – bending to scoop and splash the water over her – then crosses another long hummock of sand into the line of breaking surf, raising splashes and continuing to rub water over her upper arms and shoulders as she keeps on striding forward, wading in to mid-thigh before suddenly arcing forward in a neat dive, disappearing.

I find myself letting out a breath. Around me, people are talking away, and have been for the past half-minute or so.

I hadn’t noticed.

Jel just grins and shakes her head at me. Ryan is still staring at the waves.

I sit down with everybody else, folding the towels and El’s jacket into a neat pile.

Ferg is sitting with a cigarette in his mouth, patting the side pockets of his jacket. ‘Where’s my—’

‘Try the breast pocket,’ I suggest.

‘Ah.’

I saunter over to Phelpie, sit by him for a bit. ‘How you doing, Phelpie? How’s life anyway?’

Phelpie grins at me, rotates his shoulders inside his tee and fleece, and nods. ‘Oh, fine.’ He glances – briefly, but definitely – at Jel as he answers. That was kind of all I wanted to know. ‘Funny old day, eh?’

I nod. ‘Funerals are, sometimes, I suppose.’

‘Heard
there might have been a wee contretemps between you and Frase earlier, in the Mearnside. That right, aye?’

I waggle a hand. ‘Minor misunderstanding. Only just merited the term confrontation.’

‘Still, best be careful with Frase, eh?’ Phelpie sounds sincere and his big, open-looking face regards me with an expression of genuine concern.

‘Have been,’ I tell him. ‘Will be.’

He drinks from his can. ‘And Murdo,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘And Norrie. And Mr M, too, of course.’

‘Of course.’

He glances at me, smiles. ‘Not to mention those two lassies.’

I smile back. ‘Not to mention the lassies.’

The two wolfhounds reappear suddenly, coming tearing past us in great, long, lolloping strides, pink tongues flopping from the sides of their mouths, their breath loud and rasping as they turn, filling the air in front of us with arcs of sand. They pile off towards a small flock of seagulls on a sandbar across a shallow inlet. The dogs are still twenty metres away when the birds rise as one, wheeling through the air as the wolfhounds run and bounce beneath, barking distantly.

‘Ferg, you’re upwind again,’ Jel says, waving a hand in front of her face.

‘Sorry,’ Ferg says, sighing.

He’s been pacing restlessly around, hands stuffed into jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, fag stuck into the corner of his mouth, occasionally wandering into a position where his smoke wafts over us. Jel complains each time. He spits the butt out and pushes it into the sand with his shoe, burying it.

Ellie’s been in the sea for about eight minutes. I keep scanning the water, staring into the ephemeral chaos of the waves, trying to see the yellow bathing cap. Ellie used to wear a dark-blue cap until about seven years ago when she was nearly run over by a jet skier, just about where she’s swimming now. She switched to the more
visible colour. It should be easier to spot, but even though I’ve stood up a couple of times, I can’t see it.

I’m aware of people looking at me when I stand, and so I stretch and flex my back, pointing my elbows behind me and rolling my head around, trying to make it look like I’m just relieving some stiffness or something and that’s why I’m standing, though I strongly suspect I’m fooling nobody.

‘Is that somebody’s phone?’ Phelpie says, while I’m standing, easing a fictitious tension in my neck.

‘What?’ Jel says, then listens.

‘Thought I heard that a minute ago,’ Ryan says. ‘Wasn’t sure.’

I think I can hear something too: a ringtone like an old-fashioned landline. It’s hard to tell over the roar of the waves on the wind. The noise, if it’s there at all, ceases. I sit down again.

‘Not mine,’ Jel says. ‘Left it in the house.’

Ferg is checking his phone. ‘Me neither,’ he says.

‘Thought yours went “Answer the phone, ya fud”,’ I say.

‘Just for weekends,’ Ferg says, looking at something on the screen. ‘I have a more businesslike selection of tones based on who’s calling for when I’m at work. Thought maybe I’d reset it automatically this morning cos it’s Monday. But no; not me.’

‘That it again?’ Phelpie says.

Jeez, maybe it’s mine. I’m still not used to not having my iPhone ringtone and, now I think about it, I left the rubbish phone on default. It’s rung only once or twice since I’ve had it and even though the last time was about a quarter of an hour ago when Grier rang back, I can’t remember what the actual sound was; I was looking at the thing at the time and I might have answered as soon as the screen came alive. I pull the phone out, but of course the battery’s dead and I can still hear the rogue ringtone.

Everybody’s checking their phone now, but then the sound cuts out again.

Ellie’s. It could be Ellie’s. Her jacket is on top of one towel but beneath another. After a few seconds the old-fashioned telephone
sound happens again. We can all hear it now, like we’re tuning in to it. I reach over, pull the towel up to expose El’s jacket and suddenly I can hear the sound clearly.

‘Ellie’s,’ Jel says.

‘Could be her dad,’ Ferg suggests. ‘Late for her tea probably.’

‘Maybe she’s got a waterproof phone out there with her,’ Phelpie says. ‘That’ll be her saying she’s on her way in, have a towel ready, eh?’

‘Yeah, it’ll be in one of those many pockets in her swimsuit,’ Ferg says.

Phelpie looks hurt. ‘I was just kiddin, like, Ferg.’

The ringtone cuts off.

We sit watching the waves for a few more seconds until it goes again. By now I guess we’re all thinking that – assuming it’s the same person calling each time – there might be some sort of emergency, because that’s usually the only time you ring and ring and ring rather than just leave a message.

‘Think we should answer it?’ Ryan asks.

‘At least see who it is,’ Jel suggests.

There’s a moment between Ryan MacAvett and me as we both look at the jacket with Ellie’s phone in it and then at each other. Finally I lift the jacket up, pull Ellie’s generations-old Nokia out and look at the screen. It says
Grier
.

‘It’s Grier,’ I tell the others. I don’t answer it.

‘And that’ll be me,’ Phelpie says, pulling his own phone out of his fleece as it starts warbling. ‘It’s your mum,’ he tells Jel. ‘Sue,’ he says into the phone. ‘What can I do you for?’

El’s phone stops ringing.

Phelpie’s frowning. ‘Right. Aw aye? Ahm…Probably okay, though, eh? Aye. Aye, well, aye. Aye, I’ll keep an eye out. Naw, just sittin waitin for Ellie Murston to come back from a swim. Aye. On the beach. Oh aye, keep you informed. Aye. Aye. Bye now.’