“He’s going away?”

“Just down to Brighton. Some dullsville academic thing. It’s only for a few days.”

“So you’ll be all on your own? Want to come and stay with me?”

“Really, Becca,” I said, slightly annoyed. “I can cope on my own for a few days.”

“So, how are you coping?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. Just – coping. With everything.”

We’d reached the table by now and seated ourselves.

“Becca, I’m fine, honestly. I don’t know why–“

I stopped.

“I don’t know why what?” she said.

“Oh, nothing.” I pushed my hair back from my face. I felt suddenly hot and cross. “I just don’t know why everyone’s treating me like some kind of fragile doll, all of a sudden.”

Becca reached for my hand. “You idiot,” she said, with a soft edge to her voice. “You’ve just lost your dad, that’s why. We just want to know if you’re okay.”

It was the way she said ‘your dad’ that got me. Angus had never been a dad. A father, maybe, but never a dad. I’m an orphan, I thought suddenly. The word seemed so archaic. My throat felt tight. I turned my face away for a second, getting my voice back under control.

“Thanks Becs,” I said, after a moment. “I’m fine, but thanks.”

We applied ourselves to the menus.

“Christ, I’m starving,” said Becca. “I’m going to have a starter as well.”

“Aperitif first?” I said. “Or straight onto the vino?”

“Ooh, G&T for me. And let’s get a bottle as well, to start with. The service here is always a bit hit and miss.”

I signalled to the waiter. I felt that wonderful sense of relief I always had in her presence. Becca didn’t care much what anyone thought. She just went for it, whatever it was, and it was as if I suddenly had permission to join in.

The waiter brought our drinks and we raised them to each other.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers, my lovely.”

When I got home that night, Matt was still working at his computer. The room of the study was dark, his face lit only by the bluish glow of the laptop screen.

“Still at it?” I said, surprised. “You must have been flat out all night.”

He raised his hands above his head in a ‘don’t shoot’ gesture. Then he flipped the screen of the laptop down and swung round in his chair to face me.

“I have been, truth be told. But it’s time I called it a night and this is the perfect excuse. How’s the fair Rebecca?”

“She’s fine.” I slurred a bit on the sibilant but that didn’t matter; Matt was used to me coming home tipsy from a night out with Becca.

“Did you finish your paper?”

“Just. A few footnotes to sort out and I’m done.”

“That’s good,” I said automatically. I wandered about the study, picking things up and putting them back down. It drives Matt mad when I fiddle with things, but it’s a nervous habit, I can’t seem to stop it.

“Maudie–”

“Sorry,” I said. I touched a finger to his big glass paperweight. It was like touching a bubble of solid ice. I picked it up, liking the feel of it in my palm.

“Listen,” he said, watching me. “Why don’t you come with me? To Brighton?”

“Oh, no–”

“It’ll be good for you. Change of scene and all that. You can amuse yourself during the day and come to the functions at night.”

I groaned inwardly at the thought of all those academics and their endless, impenetrable conversation, the way they all seemed middle-aged, even if they weren’t; the glasses of cheap white wine in plastic cups; the dehydrated sandwiches and sad little bowls of crisps laid out on scratched formica-topped tables. I imagined myself standing next to Matt on the periphery of each group, trying to yawn with my mouth closed.

I tried to sound regretful.

“Darling, I would but...I don’t really feel up to socialising.”

“You’ve just been to dinner with Becca. Put that thing down darling, please, and don’t fiddle.”

“That’s different,” I said, putting the paperweight back on the desk. “She’s my best friend. I don’t have to–”

“Don’t have to what?”

“Nothing,” I muttered. I picked up the paperweight again.

“No, what?”

I put the paperweight back down with a loud clack.

“I don’t need to pretend with her,” I said.

“Mind that, you’ll break it. What do you mean, pretend? You don’t have to pretend with my friends. Do you?”

I felt very tired suddenly. “It doesn’t matter, I didn’t mean it. Let’s just forget it.”

He opened his mouth and then reconsidered.

Despite my mood, I felt a spasm of drunken desire. We hadn’t made love since before the funeral. In fact, not since the day of Angus’s death, an hour after the phone call from Mrs. Green. Sex with Matt could be such an escape and that day, that was all I needed; to be as far away from reality as I could possibly be. I’d made him fuck me over and over again, until he collapsed, gasping, and said ‘no more’; until I was raw with it, a welcome physical pain to take my mind off the other, deeper kind.

But Matt didn’t make love to me that night. I lay awake beside him in the darkness of our bedroom for a long while, listening to him breathe, locked away from me in a thicket of dreams. I turned on my side and tried to empty my mind. Eventually, I did sleep, and dreamed again of Jessica, although not of the rocks and the monster. In the dream, we were riding our bikes along the harbour road in Penzance. Jessica pedalled faster and faster – she flew further away from me, as if her bike had wings. I watched her blonde hair flutter behind her as she dwindled in my vision.

I woke up suddenly. I’d been pedalling in my sleep – the covers were bunched and twisted about my legs. I had to pee and I was thirsty.

After my visit to the bathroom, I drifted to the kitchen to pour a glass of water. I didn’t turn on the light. The kitchen was lit with an orange glow from the streetlamp outside and the plane tree outside the window tossed its branches in a night breeze, the flickering shadows of its leaves moving across the kitchen counter. I shuffled into the living room and went to the window, idly twitching aside the curtain.

There was a woman standing in the street below, a tall, thin, blonde woman, dressed in a long black coat. She was staring up at the living room window. My eyes caught hers and I gasped in fright. The expression on her face was unreadable but, even at this distance, I could sense a concentration of emotion; some kind of fixed energy pulsing through her, concentrating her gaze. It occurred to me that I was still dreaming. I closed my eyes for a long moment, afraid to move. When I opened them again, she was gone. The street was empty. I felt light-headed again and clutched at my cool glass. For a mad second, I contemplated running downstairs and out into the street, to see if I could catch a glimpse of her; that blonde hair, that burning gaze, the enveloping black coat. No. I put my glass down on the windowsill and made my way back to bed. I lay under the covers, against Matt’s warm, sleeping side, my eyes wide, unwillingly awake.

Chapter Four

I took Becca to Caernaven with me once. Just once. It was the only time I'd invited a friend back there. I don't know why, but the person I was in London was not the person I was in Cumbria and I could never seem to reconcile the two. But Becca was different - we'd known each other for long enough for that not to matter. At least, not to matter much.

Some of it was Angus as well. It wasn't that he was rude, exactly, it was just that he didn't treat people the way I wanted him to. Some small childish part of me wanted him to be a dad, a proper dad; tweedy and avuncular, paunchy, eyes twinkling benignly from behind his glasses. A pipe-smoker, a cheek-pincher, a winker. No matter that he didn't actually wear glasses and wouldn't have dreamt of wearing tweed. In reality, he was tall, broad-shouldered; he kept his steel-grey hair cut savagely short; he smoked cigarettes and no lightweight versions either: Marlboro Reds. He veered between being curt and abrupt, or completely charming, depending on who he was talking to. Once I moved away from home, I seemed to lose the ability to read his moods – on my visits back, I got it wrong all the time; being skittish and cheeky when I should have been grave, solemn when I should have been light-hearted. I found myself embarrassing then, so how must he have felt? No, it was better to be by myself when I went back, less painful all round.