Bluff, page 14
One time I had even come close to kissing her at a party, unbelievably. It had been at someone’s house near Boar’s Raik, and they had had a trampoline in the garden. Everyone had been taking turns to come out and jump on it until, for some reason, they had all gone back inside, and it had just been the two of us there, drunk and laughing, lying on our backs. I had moved my body closer to hers and propped myself up on one arm. Can anyone really remember the words that are said before you kiss for the first time? In films, the guy always says something super-smooth, something that makes the girl draw closer as she replies. Maybe I had tried something like that. I’m sure I did. It was the perfect moment. ‘I’ve gotta go,’ Joanie had said softly, bringing her face up to mine, before running back into the house.
Taking a deep breath, I got up from the desk in my bedroom and went downstairs to make eggs and bacon for Kirstin and my parents. I drank several cups of coffee, which made me even more jittery. Whenever I felt on edge, a walk on the beach always helped. And I didn’t want to go back to London without visiting the South Sands.
My mother said I could use her car. I put the notebook into my backpack, turning over the list of suspicious characters in my mind. As I backed out of the drive, there was Stuart Dunn again, waving at me from the pavement. I wound down the window. His eyes reminded me of a woodland creature’s: small and beady underneath tufted grey eyebrows.
‘How are you keeping, Cammy?’ he asked, leaning through the window, smelling of stale tobacco. Only my mother called me Cammy.
‘Alright, yourself?’ I had places to be.
‘We’re having a wee get-together for Hogmanay at ours, just a few drinks. Do tell your mother. And father.’ He smiled, but his eyes stayed beady.
‘Will do. See you now!’ I said cheerily, decisively pressing the window button. I would conveniently forget that invitation.
By the time I arrived in St Rule, the day was getting on and the light was faltering. The old grey town was quiet, with just a few people out shopping as I walked along Martyr’s Street. Despite the coffee, tiredness was creeping up on me and I started to feel lightheaded. I drifted past the glowing shop fronts and realized I was automatically making my way to Alan’s Fish Bar. The town chippy. It brought back memories of being crammed into Cara’s green Beetle on the way to yet another house party, rain pummelling the roof as indie bands played from a cassette adapter. I had even queued there with my dad on hot days when I was young enough to be holding a bucket and spade.
In London fish suppers were rare to come by. When you found one, it was usually a slimy imitation with a side of skinny French fries that went cold before you had left the shop. Fife, with its network of coastal villages and potato fields, produced the best there was and we knew it.
When I reached the right street corner, my heart sank to see a new, shinier storefront in its place. Grey Fryer’s Fish, the sign read. I rolled my eyes and scanned the menu outside. Maybe I wasn’t one to talk with my moules marinière, but ‘bougie’ didn’t begin to cover it. The sound of ‘black pudding popsicles’ gave me the boak. Tourist money had always kept the town afloat, but this was getting ridiculous. From the small crowd of customers inside, it did look popular, however.
As I went in grudgingly, to buy something to eat, I glanced up at the chip shop’s mirror and caught a man’s eye in the queue behind me. He was thirty-something, wearing a blue baseball cap and seventies-style coat. A piercing glinted on one side of his lip. Not your average golfer.
I hastily looked away and yet, as I placed my order, I could have sworn he was still staring at me.
I had to admit the haddock was good, very good, if much more expensive than before. I started to make my way towards the beach through St Rule’s wiggly streets. The light was disappearing. A couple of students passed me as I walked. They always looked so healthy, their cheeks pink from Frisbee-throwing or hours on the golf course. This wasn’t term time, so there were far fewer of them around as I left the shelter of the town, with its turreted, baronial architecture, and arrived at the tarmacked road to the beach. I had learned to drive on that road, in that sprawling, sandy car park, its seagrass flattened from years of tyres.
As soon as I heard the sea, my whole body relaxed. In the greying light, I jumped down from the road on to the beach. Something about the activity, putting one foot in front of the other in the wide, empty space, felt cleansing. I looked back at the town, where lights were beginning to come on. I had been doing this for most of my life. I had spent summers here as a child, building sandcastles and braving the cold tides. Today the sea was dark and amorphous, the slate sky melding with miles of sand.
I turned my head and caught sight of the man in the baseball cap again, walking further down the beach behind me. He strode evenly, with purpose. People came here to amble by the shore, walk their dogs or play some kind of sport. There was nowhere to go, except back the way you came.
I felt clumsy trying to eat my chips and walk at the same time, so I sat down by the dunes to my left and stared out at the sea, waiting for the man to pass. He never did. When I stood up to head back to town, I couldn’t see him. I told myself he was allowed to follow the same route as me in this tiny town. Perhaps he had been going back to the car park. All the same, I kept looking over my shoulder into the falling dusk.
Extract from ‘Who’s Afraid of the Dark?’ by Joanie Sinclair, 2012
The door squeaked and started to open. Gloved fingers curled round it. A hand large enough to be a man’s. The torchlight swung like a lighthouse beam, blinding me.
27
Joanie, September 2013
Vik’s flat was a short walk from the café, in another converted Victorian terrace, near the School of History, upstairs this time. Joanie could hear the sea outside as they entered his living room. The place was spartan, but elegant: its corniced white ceiling flowed into a large bay window that framed the night sky. The bare wooden floorboards were scattered with all sorts of tech flotsam and jetsam. Mixing decks, wires, speakers. ‘Excuse the mess,’ he said. My flatmate, he mouthed, pointing his thumb to the kitchen next door, where a kettle was boiling. A man came through, holding a mug of tea, and introduced himself as Joshua, a politics student from Singapore, while trying to hide his puzzlement as to what Joanie was doing there.
‘I thought you’d be in bed by now!’ Vik said, joking.
‘Assignment deadline. It’s not going well.’ There was an awkward silence. ‘So,’ he couldn’t resist asking, ‘how do you guys know each other?’
‘We work at Hallowed Ground,’ Vik replied. ‘I’m sure I told you.’
Joanie was sure he hadn’t. It stung, even after Joshua had left the room.
‘Is everything OK?’ Vik asked. He had asked the same question on the way to his flat.
Joanie could only give the same answer as she had then. ‘Did you see that guy who lay down next to me? He’s my ex-boyfriend. Over from Canada. He just turned up at the class. I told him yesterday I didn’t want to see him any more.’ She paused. ‘We broke up because of Mia,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s why she always made me so anxious.’
He looked genuinely shocked. ‘He sounds like a weirdo,’ said Vik, trying to cheer her up with his awkward humour. ‘They both do.’ He pulled her in for a hug and kissed her head protectively. At once, Joanie relaxed as she began to kiss him back.
Soon they sat entwined, in comfortable silence, listening to the waves outside. Joanie took in more of her surroundings. A record collection. Textbooks. A vintage map on the wall. Vik asked her if she was hungry. He would order something. He started dialling a number on a landline.
‘I don’t know anyone who has an actual landline still,’ she said.
‘It makes my life easier,’ said Vik. ‘I save a lot of money.’
‘So that’s why you never gave me your number,’ Joanie said, trying to sound like she was joking.
‘You can have my number any time you want.’ He pretended to look annoyed. ‘But I want you to try and remember it. Not put it in your phone, like everyone else. Nobody knows anyone’s number any more.’
Joanie thought about how, when she was a child, she could recite her three best friends’ numbers off by heart. ‘Only if you remember mine,’ she said to him.
While they waited for the pizza to arrive, they listened to a record player, old bands that Joanie hadn’t heard of, and repeated each other’s numbers, like they were the lyrics to a song.
‘You’re strange,’ said Joanie, giving Vik another kiss. ‘Do you know that?’
‘It seems you like weird guys,’ he said.
She bristled. ‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Oh, come on, I was joking.’
Joanie went to the window. ‘I think I can see our pizza.’
‘Don’t tell Erin we got the extra mozzarella,’ said Vik. ‘She’s trying to make me vegan too.’
He came over and put his arms around her again. ‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that. I also want to say that I’m not going to come on the trip with you guys.’
‘Oh. Why not? Is it Erin?’ Joanie asked, narrowing her eyes as her heart sank. ‘David?’
The doorbell rang and Vik left to fetch the pizza. When he came back and opened the hot box on the table, he said, ‘It’s not Erin. It’s really a work-related thing. David and I had a bit of a disagreement over the manuscript he’s working on. It was hard to talk about. He’s my supervisor, as I think I’ve told you. And he’s been super-helpful. You remember he was talking about the manuscript at his house? I won’t get into the details, but it’s just not a good time for me to go.’ He sighed, then started to speak again. ‘Recently, I went with him and some other students to Maeyar. The island. He wanted to experiment. With drugs, of course. Kind of like at the beach. But it was different. There were these tourists, for one thing.’ He laughed. ‘They have a visitor centre.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Joanie, a little too sharply. ‘I used to work there. Did I not tell you?’ She tried hard to remember if she had ever seen Vik before. There had been so many tour groups, coming and going. David’s face was familiar, but Vik’s she would have remembered.
‘Well, it ended on a bad note. I’m not really interested in doing that again.’
‘But that’s not why we’re going. It’s not for his research; it’s a trip with me and Erin. We’re doing breath stuff. Meditation. It’s not Maeyar, it’s a cottage in the Highlands. Come on. You and me can drive up?’ She blinked at him, pleadingly. ‘It’ll be so fun.’
‘Well. There was something else I wanted to tell you. I applied for a visiting studentship. I thought there was no chance in hell I’d get it. But, er, I recently found out I’ve been accepted.’
‘OK …’
‘It’s in Bologna.’
Joanie’s stomach dropped. ‘What?’ She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.
‘Don’t be too effusive.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Joanie. ‘I just … wasn’t expecting you to say that. Is that in Italy?’
He smiled in a way that annoyed her deeply. ‘Yeah, it’s only the oldest university in the world. One of the few older than this place.’
Maybe that was why he’d been a little hot and cold. ‘OK. Well done. I really mean that. I don’t know what a visiting studentship is, but it sounds fancy. I’m guessing you’ll be away for a while. Why the hell are you telling me right now? You knew I was upset!’
‘I only just found out. I’ll be there for the best part of a year. I have to move there. I applied because I really needed to get out of St Rule and … well, I wasn’t expecting to meet you. I’m sorry.’ He scratched his head, with a grimace. ‘I really like you.’
Joanie bit into a slice of pizza thoughtfully. The hot stringy cheese scalded the roof of her mouth. The news was too sudden, too much. She’d get the bus home. How did Vik get to travel abroad but she couldn’t even make it out of St Rule? She wanted him to miss her. She wanted him to need her in his life. But perhaps she was wanting too much. Things seemed to be moving too fast. It would be good to go away for a little bit, to gain the space and time to think and breathe.
28
Cameron, 30 December 2023
The following afternoon I drove to a newly refurbished pub that had caught my eye in St Rule to spend a couple of hours reading one of my dad’s detective novels. It felt nice to do something for no other purpose than enjoyment. I could nurse a pint without any pressure to buy another. I had even started to think about moving back up north for good.
At about five p.m., the street outside was as dark as night and I decided to make my way back to the car park. The temperature had dropped, and somewhere in the distance bagpipes were playing. I remembered the young man at the party, two nights before, descending the staircase, playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’. I didn’t recognize this music, which sounded more sombre as it echoed through the town’s shadowy, medieval roads. As I made my way further along the cobbles of Martyr’s Street, I saw firelight moving towards me, like a glowing river. The main road had been closed off and a line of students, in their long purple gowns, was headed this way. It seemed the university was coming alive again, before term had even begun. An early start to our new-year celebrations.
Shoppers bundled up in scarves and puffer jackets began gathering either side of the road, as the gowned procession came closer. The lit torches cast shadows over young faces. The students walked slowly, without talking, careful not to extinguish the precariously wild flames that burned at the tops of heavy wooden poles. They were moving in the direction of the harbour. More people – locals and tourists – came out of pubs and shops to gather at either side of the road, taking out their phones to record the spectacle.
Like many of the university’s bizarre traditions, the meaning of this ritual eluded me. I had no more idea of why the students were solemnly processing than why, when term started in the autumn, crowds of them ran riot in the town, dousing each other with water, flour and foam until they were a seething white mass. In spring, they processed in historical costume, led by a carriage bedecked with flowers, while a male student in a white dress and wig leaned out of the window and waved. Nothing like that happened in the urban campuses of Edinburgh or Glasgow. Smaller and more rural, St Rule was a law unto itself.
As more spectators started to gather around me, waiting for the students to pass, I noticed the man from the beach on the other side of the street, frowning at me in his fashionable coat. Just then, the bagpipes grew louder and the procession moved between us, the bright torchlight demanding my attention. When I squinted at the other side of the road, the man had disappeared.
Alarmed, I made my way through the crowd and ducked down a side-street, unsure where to go. Ahead of me lay a few shops set into the Georgian architecture. They were all closed, apart from one, the glowing town bookshop, Sands & Sons. I looked over my shoulder. There was no one else on the street. It was late afternoon and a few people milled about inside. I pushed my way through the door into warmth and brightness, and the outside world turned black. Wooden ladders leaned against the shelves here and there, inviting someone to climb them, while alcoves revealed comfy armchairs and dangling house plants. As I moved further inside, away from the window, I saw that a few customers were seated among cushions, monstera leaves and small pots of tea.
My mind spun as I browsed a corner of the bookshelves at random, my hand passing over stout biographies and memoirs on autopilot. Why had that man been frowning at me? Perhaps I had been mistaken. In a small town, you were always bumping into the same people.
I sighed and tried to distract myself with some books. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Either in the bookshop, I supposed, or life in general. Christmas was over; there were no more presents to buy. When I spotted a cookbook by one of Vanessa’s favourite chefs, I willed away thoughts of her upcoming birthday. I veered towards paperback fiction instead, my eyes scanning for any French authors on my to-read list. Next to one of the ladders a display of young-adult books caught my eye, dragons and roses swirling around the covers.
Next to the display, Mia was stacking some shelves. She looked the consummate bookseller, in a pair of stylish glasses, with her curly hair tied back.
I immediately felt guilty for not replying to her message from a few days ago. I should have remembered that St Rule was not like London: if you ghosted someone, there was a high chance they would come back to haunt you.
I murmured her name in the quiet shop. At first I wasn’t sure she had heard me. Then she turned from the bottom shelf.
‘Sorry I didn’t get a chance to reply,’ I continued. ‘It’s been non-stop with the family, you know.’ Non-stop mince pies and Christmas TV.
‘Yeah, of course,’ she replied, steadying a tower of pristine hardbacks on either side. In this light, her olive skin looked paler than before, even anaemic. I pictured her in the school library at lunchtime, when I was on duty as a monitor. I would be the one sitting amid piles of books, while she studied at a table.
She looked around with an awkward smile, a few strands of hair stuck to her forehead. I realized it must be almost closing time and I should drive home for dinner. ‘Great to see you the other night,’ I said. I was about to turn and leave, when I felt an overwhelming impulse to ask something. I wasn’t sure when I would get another chance. ‘I was wondering. You sounded kinda worried about Joanie. Is everything OK? Have you seen her?’
Her face changed. ‘No.’ She stood up and took a step closer towards me. ‘It’s just one of those things I don’t have a good feeling about.’
‘What gives you that impression?’ I didn’t know what to make of this. She had been awful to Joanie. Adam had said she hated her.
‘Have you seen her over the years?’ Mia asked. ‘I remember you were friends.’
‘No … I mean we were friends, yes, but I haven’t seen her since …’ I couldn’t bring myself to mention the party ‘… school ended. Same with you?’
