Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

‘And Seonag was just there.’

I could see the shame in his eyes. He shrugged. ‘Yes.’ And even he realized how lame that sounded. ‘It was stupid, I know. I don’t even care about Seonag. I never have.’

‘And you clearly don’t give a damn about me. You’ve been avoiding me for weeks. And now this.’ I paused, uncertain if I had ever felt this much pain before. Then remembered. Only once. ‘We’re through, Ruairidh Macfarlane. Finished. It’s over.’

And I turned and fled in tears back to the lodge. In my room I lay on my bed and wept until my tears ran dry, leaving me with nothing but a sore throat and red and swollen eyes. Eventually, I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed and burying my face in my hands. My summer idyll had turned into a nightmare, and all I wanted was to get away.

The door opened and light from the hallway fell in a slab across the floor. Seonag stepped into the light, a silhouette in the doorway. I couldn’t see her face as she said, ‘Don’t go reading too much into what you saw down there, Niamh.’

I found my voice with difficulty. ‘And what should I read into it?’

‘I don’t care about Ruairidh.’

‘Funny, he said the same thing about you.’ Which seemed to take the wind out of her sails. But not for long.

‘Just goes to show, then, doesn’t it? You can’t trust him.’

During the few days that remained I avoided contact with them both. The whole atmosphere in the lodge had changed. I’m sure even the guests must have sensed the difference. It felt as if every one of us had overstayed our welcome. The summer was finished and all we wanted now was to get back to our real lives. And when I returned to the mainland to start the autumn term of my second year at Galashiels, I was hugely depressed and determined to put Ruairidh and Seonag as far behind me as possible.

Darkness had fallen by the time Niamh and Seonag got back to the house. The sky to the north was alive and flickering with colour. The aurora borealis had begun its spectacular celestial light show. Red, pink and purple grew out of the arc of green light that spanned the horizon, swirling and rising into the black of the sky, reflecting below on the darkness of the ocean. It all seemed to derive from tiny explosions of light moving back and forth just beyond the horizon. Niamh had seen it many times, but it was never the same twice and she never tired of it.

She and Seonag stretched out on the settee, and watched the show, framed as it was by the giant windows that looked out on the Minch.

For a while neither of them spoke. Niamh and Ruairidh had lain here watching their own personal display of the northern lights together on so many occasions, that somehow it didn’t seem right for them to carry on without him. Just one more reminder that he was gone.

Finally, Seonag said, ‘This is something I should have said years ago...’

Niamh turned her head towards her in the dark, seeing all the colours of the aurora borealis reflected on the pale ivory of her face.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’ Niamh said, although she knew.

‘For being such a shit all those years ago.’ She looked at Niamh and shrugged. ‘I can’t even explain it to you now, any more than I could have at the time. Hormones, I suppose. That’s my only excuse.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘Anyway, you should know that it’s something I’ve always regretted. You do and say things at that age, and when you look back you just cringe with embarrassment.’ A pause. ‘I’m sorry, Niamh. I’m only glad it all turned out for the best, in spite of me.’ And during a lull in the lights a shadow crossed her face. ‘Until this.’ She paused. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

Niamh nodded. What could she say? She had put it behind her a long time ago. And if she couldn’t exactly forgive her friend, she no longer blamed her.

Seonag said, ‘What are you going to do about Ranish Tweed?’

Present reality came flooding back, like water filling an empty pool. ‘I’ve no idea. To be honest, I’ve not even thought about it. And I’m not sure I care.’ She paused for reflection. ‘Ranish was all about me and Ruairidh. A kind of physical manifestation of what it was we had between us. Of what was special about us. I don’t know that I have any desire to carry it on without him.’

Seonag stared into her glass. ‘It would be a shame to let it go, then. Like letting go of Ruairidh, too.’

And Niamh saw the truth in that. Ranish was the biggest piece of him that she had left. And yet part of her wondered if it wouldn’t simply be a constant and painful reminder of what she had lost.

‘I’ve enjoyed working for Ranish,’ Seonag said. ‘With both of you. And watching it grow. We’re still getting more orders than we can fulfil. It has a long-term future ahead of it.’

Niamh wondered if Seonag saw herself as being a part of that future. She remembered how reluctant she had been to take Seonag on in the first place, and how she had been overruled by Ruairidh’s mother. But in the end Seonag had proved to be the rock on which the company had built its expansion. She had a sound business head, persuading them of the need to computerize to manage growth. Now, perhaps, she wasn’t just a part of the company’s future. She was its future.

Niamh said, ‘I’ll think about it all after the funeral.’

It was late now, and Niamh could hardly keep her eyes open. The aurora borealis was still doing its thing all along the horizon to the north, but by now they had both stopped seeing it. The extraordinary had become animated wallpaper, and they stood to head along the hall to the bedrooms.

Seonag gave her friend a long, lingering hug, before kissing her softly on the forehead. ‘See you in the morning,’ she whispered, and slipped into her room, closing the door gently behind her.

Niamh stood for several long moments in the dark, tinnitus ringing in her ears like a distant echo of the bomb that had taken Ruairidh. The blast, and the screams, and the flash of light which had very nearly blinded her, replayed itself in her memory, and she wondered why she was so reluctant to go into the bedroom she had shared with him. After all, hadn’t she taken comfort from sleeping in her grandfather’s bed after he had died?

She forced herself into the room, standing with her back to the door after she closed it, staring at the unmade bed in the darkness. She switched on a light and pushed her suitcase off the end of it and on to the floor, before heading for the bathroom, discarding her clothes as she went.

In the shower she stood naked beneath the flow of hot water, hoping that somehow it might wash away the pain. Of course, it didn’t. When finally she emerged, skin pink and stinging, and dried herself on a big soft white towel, she padded through to the bedroom and collapsed into the bed. The impression of his head was still pressed into his pillow, and she rolled over to lie on it, trying to recapture the sense of him, his scent, his body shape in the bed. But all she found was emptiness.

She reached over to turn out the light and was asleep almost before she had extinguished it.

She had no idea what time it was when she awoke. The bedside clock was flashing from some power blip that must have happened while she and Ruairidh were away. But she knew that something had wakened her. A sound, perhaps. Or a vibration. Something she had felt more than heard.

She sat bolt upright, sleep banished in a moment. And listened. Intently. There it was again. A sound, or a sensation, like a door closing, as if someone out there were moving around the house. But softly, secretly.

Niamh slipped from the bed, pulling on a black silk dressing gown embroidered with dragons and tying it tightly around herself. She eased open the bedroom door and saw moonlight falling in through the Velux windows in the roof, casting its silver light into the living room. She glanced at Seonag’s door. It was firmly shut. She listened for a moment outside it, but could hear nothing from within. She drifted quickly down the hall, then, and into the living space illuminated by those vast windows that gave on to the Minch. Out on the water she saw burnished moonlight reflected on its surface, like silver poured from the moon.