Peter May: Coffin Road

‘Why? Did you think I wouldn’t come?’

‘I didn’t know I was expecting you.’

‘Idiot!’ I can hear the smile in her voice, and roll on to my side as she starts to undress, clothes falling to the floor, until I can see the smooth curve of her hips and the darker circles of her areolae around hard nipples.

‘What about Jon?’

‘What about him? You weren’t expecting him to join us, were you?’ And she slips, grinning, into the bed beside me.

‘Won’t he wonder where you are?’

‘He’s still on that medication. Knocks him out. He won’t surface for another eight hours.’ I realise I am supposed to know what the medication is for, so I don’t ask.

I don’t know whether to be alarmed or excited. The proximity of her naked body to my own is immediately arousing. The scent of her perfume, the warmth that emanates from smooth skin that suddenly slides over mine. Thigh on thigh as she moves between my legs, insinuating her body on top of mine. Hard breasts pressing into my chest, her breath in my face. I feel cool palms on each cheek as she holds my head and brings her lips to mine. I can only imagine we have done this many times before, but for me it is like the first time, and it feels as if she has lit a fire inside me. It rages and burns and fuels an unquenchable desire simply to consume her.

I grab her arms and flip her suddenly over on to her back and hear her tiny gasp of surprise. Almost subconsciously, I am aware of Bran jumping down from the bed and sloping huffily away along the hall. My mouth finds hers again and our hunger for each other is limitless. She writhes below me as I move my mouth across every part of her. Breasts, nipples, belly and the soft fuzz of her pubis. To breathe her in is intoxicating. I feel myself losing control, driven, possessed and wanting to possess her.

But she fights back, an equal battle for possession, and we go to war with our mouths and our hands, all intelligent thought sacrificed on the altar of physical desire, bringing us ultimately to a frantic, breathless conclusion that leaves us gasping and shiny with sweat, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling with wide eyes, awaiting the return of some semblance of sanity.

Finally she says, as if only now catching her breath, ‘That was amazing.’

I nod, at a loss really for words. Then I realise she can’t see me and say, ‘It was.’

She hoists herself up to lean on one elbow and stare into my face in the semi-darkness, lightly tracing fingers across my chest. ‘Better than the first time. Better than the last. What’s got into you, Neal? You seem... I don’t know, different.’

A dozen responses flit through my head, each one flippant or evasive, and all failing to address the truth. I feel nerves like butterflies fluttering in my belly. It is the moment to share, because I am certain I cannot keep this in much longer. And yet still I am afraid to address what it is I can’t even remember. In the end, all I say is, ‘I am.’

I turn my head to see her half-frowning, half-smiling. ‘Are you? In what way?’

I draw a deep, tremulous breath. ‘They say that all any of us are is the sum total of our memories. They are what make us who we are. Take them away and all you are left with is a blank. Like a computer without software.’

She seems to think about that for a moment. ‘I’m trying to imagine what that might be like,’ she says. ‘Weird. I suppose memories are just experience. We learn from our experiences. So without them...’ She laughs. ‘We’d be just like children again.’

‘Not if all you took away were the memories of yourself. Who you are, what you are. Everything you have learned in life remains. It’s only you who’s been taken out of the equation.’ I suppose I am trying to find a way of explaining it to myself. But it’s not easy, and I am not sure I am anywhere close, but now her half-smile has gone and only the frown remains.

‘What are you saying, Neal?’

I sigh. There is no turning back. ‘Sally, the only reason I know that I am Neal Maclean is because I saw the name on a utility bill. The only reason I know your name is Sally is because that’s what Jon called you.’

She laughs. ‘Is that supposed to be funny?’ Then, ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing, because it’s not.’ And that thought banishes her laughter, and the smile. ‘Neal, you’re scaring me.’

‘I’m only telling you how it is, Sally. Eight hours ago, ten, maybe, I don’t know how long it was, I found myself washed up on the beach out there. I was soaked through, freezing cold, and only still alive because I was wearing a life jacket. I don’t know where I’d been, or how I got there.’ I sit up, knees drawn to my chest, cupping my face in my hands and breathing into them. Then I turn to look at her with an intensity that I see reflected in her alarm. ‘I had no memory of who I was, or what happened. And I still don’t.’

Her frown of consternation cuts deep shadows in her face. ‘How’s that possible?’

‘I don’t know, but it is. I’m the blank that’s left when you take away the memories. It’s not just my life that I can’t remember, my whole history, it’s who I am. What I’m like. What I’m capable of.’ I hesitate, almost too frightened to shape the thought with words. ‘I feel as if I have done something...’ I search for the right word. ‘Awful. I don’t know. Shocking. Every time I try to force memories from my subconscious, I find myself lost in some black fog of dread. Beyond it, I know, there’s clarity. But I just can’t reach it. And I’m not sure now that I want to.’

There is a long silence. ‘You were acting really strange this afternoon.’

I nod.

‘You didn’t prang your car, did you?’

‘No.’

‘So where is it?’

‘I don’t know.’

She takes some moments to digest this. ‘You must have gone out to the Flannans after all.’

I shrug. ‘I don’t know why I would.’

‘You go out there all the time, Neal. Research for your book.’

‘I’m not writing a bloody book!’ My raised voice startles her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It was you and Jon who told me that. That I was writing a book. About the Flannan Isles mystery.’

‘Only because that’s what you told us.’

I shake my head. ‘After you’d gone I checked my computer. I found twenty chapter templates and not a single word in any of them. If that’s really what I told you, Sally, then I was lying. I’m not writing any book.’

‘Then what have you been doing here all this time?’

‘You tell me, because I haven’t the first idea.’ My frustration is bubbling out of me, and I hear my voice rising in pitch and volume. I force myself to calm down. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s just... well, you must know so much more about me than I do.’

Her voice is quiet, and I can sense that she has retreated into herself. ‘What do you want to know?’ There is a lack of warmth now in her tone. ‘After all, I can only tell you what you told us.’

‘Well, let’s start with that.’

She rolls away to slip out of bed and start dressing. The intimacy between us is long gone. When she finishes, she sits on the edge of the bed, her back towards me, and I cannot see her face as she speaks. ‘You’ve been on the island for about eighteen months. Taken this place on an open-ended long-term let. A sort of sabbatical, you said, from an academic career in Edinburgh. Time you were using to write your book on the disappearance of the lighthouse men.’ She half-turns her head towards me. ‘At least, that’s what you said.’ Then, ‘You were always a little bit mysterious about yourself. What exactly it was you did for a living. Whether or not you were married. You don’t wear a ring, but I could see from the paler band of skin on your ring finger that you had until recently.’