The Blue Hour

Chapter 46

46

Carrachan, 1993

Grace was at the surgery in Carrachan – it had been a busy day, there had been a cold snap, it was the start of the flu season. At the end of a grinding shift, just as she was shutting down her computer, getting ready to leave, the practice nurse popped her head around the door. ‘Dr Haswell, there’s a young man in the waiting room, says he knows you. He says he’s not ill, though if you ask me he doesn’t look too clever. Nick, from London.’ London , said as though it were an especially virulent STD.

Walking down the hallway from her office to the waiting room, Grace was trying to think whether there could be a different Nick from London, because it couldn’t be her Nick, could it? How could he be here?

And yet there, sitting in one of the bright yellow moulded plastic chairs against the opposite wall, he was. He looked up but she couldn’t meet his eye; instead she looked down at her feet. Her face was burning, she felt as though she might fall if she took another step.

When she raised her eyes at last, he was on his feet, holding out his arms. ‘Hi, Grace.’

He did look ill – scrawny and whey-faced, his pretty face pimpled with spots – but there was still plenty of the Nick she knew a decade earlier: the light in his soft hazel eyes, the deep dimple just to the left side of his mouth. She didn’t hug him but she smiled, and his own grin widened in response and she felt … not elation , because that would be less complicated, that would be purer. What she felt was pride, the absence of shame.

That is what the end of loneliness feels like, she thought. It felt like the end of hostilities: with the world, with herself. It felt like the beginning of possibility. The hard edges of her world began to soften, the boundary dividing her from everyone else began to break.

Nick stayed. He slept on her couch. He’d be there when she left for work and when she returned, the duvet pulled up to his chin. He rarely ventured out. He was cold, always cold, he couldn’t warm up though he’d had her heating turned up high all day long. She made him soup, persuaded him to eat, to wash; eventually to talk.

He was sorry, he said, just showing up like this, he didn’t deserve her kindness. He’d been going through a bad patch. He and Audrey had got themselves into trouble – with drugs, then with money. He’d nowhere else to go.

‘Where is Audrey now?’ Grace asked. ‘Do you know?’

He shook his head. They’d lived for a time with Audrey’s sister in Manchester, but they argued constantly and the sister threw them out. Nick crashed with friends, sleeping on sofas until they tired of him, too. When Audrey got a job at a pub in Kendal, in the Lakes, he followed, but there was someone else on the scene by then, some other guy, so that didn’t work out either.

‘I think she’s probably back in Manchester. But …’ he sighed, heavily, ‘I think she’s lost to me. I only dabbled with the gear, but Audrey really invested . I love her,’ he said sadly, ‘but I knew in the end I’d have to make a choice: I could be with her, or I could get clean, and I chose to get clean.’

‘You always were canny,’ Grace said.

He shook his head, looked up at her from his nest on the couch. He was so sorry, he said, so sorry for leaving the way they had. It was unfair. It was cruel. He hadn’t meant to be cruel at the time, hadn’t meant anything at all. Audrey had wanted to go and he’d just followed her out the door.

‘It was a long time ago,’ Grace said, though when she thought about it the hurt was just as fresh as if it had happened yesterday. ‘Bygones,’ she lied, smiling, ‘water under the bridge.’

She told him he could stay for as long as he liked. It would be just like the old days.

Nick laughed. Oh yeah. Just like that.

Being around Nick awakened in Grace an old longing, though for what exactly she wasn’t sure. Friendship, certainly, but more than that, she wanted attention, she wanted comfort . She kept thinking about the trip to St Malo, watching Nick comb tangles out of Audrey’s long dark hair after they’d been for a swim. She wanted something like that, but she didn’t know how to ask for it; just the thought of asking for it made her cringe with her whole body.

So instead, she took care of him. She worked and cooked and cajoled; Nick barely moved from the couch. She noticed quite early on that if she left money lying around it disappeared; she noticed that the leather jewellery case containing an ancient string of pearls she’d been left by her grandmother was gone, too. And yet he wasn’t using , she felt sure. She could tell. Surely she’d be able to tell?

He was depressed, though, anyone could see that. He needed to get out more. At the time, Grace was still living in Carrachan, in an ugly little house with a view of the distillery, the air thick with the smell of yeast and vinegar. Nick needed light. He needed fresh air and exercise.

‘This weekend,’ Grace said to him one day, ‘if the weather holds, we could go out to Eris. It’s a tidal island, a bit further south. It’s very beautiful. We could take the bus down, go for a walk? You used to love a good hike. It’ll be like that time we went to France, do you remember? Just like the old days.’

The weather didn’t hold. By Wednesday, the Met Office was predicting storms, an amber warning, winds forecast to reach ninety miles an hour. When the storm hit in the early hours of Friday, it was even worse than feared and Grace thought the gale would rip the roof off. Train services were halted, roads closed. Hundreds of trees were felled along the coast.

But on Sunday, the sun shone. The advice was still not to travel unless necessary, but Grace was desperate to get Nick off the couch and out of the house, so they put on their coats and took the bus to Eris.

As they walked through the harbour car park they saw someone sitting on one of the benches, sobbing as though her heart might break. She was so small they thought at first she was a lost child, but as they started to approach, she looked up and they saw it was a woman, beautiful and bruised. She spat out a word that sounded like a curse.

‘Bit Wicker Man out here, isn’t it?’ Nick muttered. He was wearing a matching red scarf and hat he’d borrowed from Grace and the ensemble made him look childlike, too.

It was cold, the wind brisk, the waves choppy, higher than they would usually have been half an hour after low tide. Eris Island was deserted – no one else fool enough to cross – and miraculously beautiful. The world washed clean, the sea wild, the bracken golden, still sparkling with rain.

They made their way up the track past the derelict farmhouse, slogged up the hill, skirting the wood. ‘It might be dangerous,’ Grace said. ‘Some of the trees might be ready to come down.’

Nick was quiet but biddable, shivering in his too-thin coat, pulling the sleeves down over his hands and retracting his head into the collar like a tortoise. ‘Who owns the house?’ he asked as they paused for a moment on the shoulder of the hill, looking back down the slope towards the mainland, their breath clouding the air.

‘It’s a matter of some dispute,’ Grace said. ‘At least that’s what the nurse at the surgery told me. The owner died intestate a couple of years back, his kids are arguing over what to do with the place, and all the while the house is left to crumble into ruins.’

‘Wonder how much they’d take for it?’ Nick said, plunging his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. ‘Be a pretty good place to lie low, wouldn’t it?’

‘Is that what you’re doing?’ Grace asked.

Nick shrugged. ‘It’s what I’d like to do. Just … live quietly, get my shit together. Somewhere like this?’ He smiled at her and Grace’s heart lifted.

At the top, they ate their sandwiches with their legs dangling over the edge of the rock, watching the gulls do battle with the wind, watching the sea hurl itself against the cliff face. When they had finished eating, Nick climbed carefully to his feet and reached for Grace’s hand, pulling her up.

‘This has been a good day,’ he said, his hand still holding hers. ‘Thank you.’

It had been a good day, but they’d lingered too long. By the time they started their descent, the sky was already taking on the inky blue of night and so they took the most direct route, through the wood, hurrying, Grace glancing anxiously at her watch, cursing herself beneath her breath. Bloody idiot.

‘Could you give me a lift to the station tomorrow?’ Nick asked as they manoeuvred their way around the deep pit left where a tree had been uprooted.

Grace stopped abruptly. ‘To the station?’

‘Yeah,’ Nick said. ‘If the trains are running, that is. I need to get down to Manchester. I was thinking …’ He paused. It was almost dark in the wood, but even in the low light, Grace could see his gaze shift, his eyes sliding from her face, focusing on some point beyond her. ‘I was thinking I might try to track Audrey down … I’d like to try again, just one last time, to sort things out. And I need money, I need to start looking for work.’

‘But …’ Grace felt her breath coming suddenly very fast; she dug her nails into the palms of her hands. ‘What about … what you said, about making a choice between being with her and getting clean? What about—?’

‘I am clean now,’ Nick said. ‘I don’t need to choose any longer.’

‘But what about everything you said, about lying low, about the old days—’

‘ You talked about the old days, Grace.’ Nick sounded exasperated. ‘And I mean, lying low ? I was just talking, I was daydreaming, I’m not going to buy a fucking house on an island, am I? I barely have enough money to keep me in milk and bread.’ He craned his neck to look further over her shoulder. ‘We should go, we don’t want to get stuck here—’

‘You could look for work here,’ Grace said, standing her ground.

Nick laughed grimly. ‘Here? What the fuck would I do here ?’

‘You could get a job at the hotel,’ Grace suggested weakly, ‘or maybe the pub?’

‘I know I didn’t finish my degree, Grace,’ Nick muttered, rolling his eyes, ‘but I was studying medicine. I think I’m probably capable of a bit more than bar work.’

‘Of course you are, I just meant—’ She broke off. ‘You don’t really need to work at all, not right away. I’ll look after us for a while. We’ll hang out, keep each other company. It’ll be like the old days.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Grace,’ Nick snapped, ‘we’re not students any longer. It’s not going to be like the old days .’ He moved to his left to get past her, but she stepped out to block his way and so he pivoted to the right instead, pushing her to one side, but as he strode forward, he trod right on the lip of the hole the tree roots had left and his ankle turned and he fell, yelping in pain, into the pit.

If Grace hadn’t been so upset, she might have laughed at him, flailing around in the mud, in the semi-darkness, cursing at the top of his voice.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked when eventually he stopped yelling. She gathered he’d twisted his ankle. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Yes it’s fucking bad,’ he snarled up at her. ‘Help me, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there, give me your hand.’

He held out a hand to her. Grace looked at it and took a small step backwards.

‘Oh, now you won’t help me?’ He started scrabbling up the side of the bank, but his old trainers were not suited to the terrain; he kept slipping back, sliding down into the mud. ‘After weeks of hovering over me, treating me like a child … no, a pet , something you can keep … now, because I won’t stay here playing … happy families or whatever it is you want, I never could understand, what do you want? A friend? A brother? Do you want me to fuck you?’

Grace put her hands up to her ears, she couldn’t bear it, to hear him talk to her like that, but he wouldn’t stop, on and on he went; as he dragged himself on to level ground he insulted Grace, her miserable little house, this godforsaken place, her pathetic, lonely life. She couldn’t bear it, she just wanted it to stop, she would do anything to make him stop and so while he knelt at her feet spitting venom, she raised her walking boot and brought it down heavily on his hand. His cry of pain was like a melody.

Shaking with rage, he struggled to his feet. ‘That was assault, what you just did,’ he hissed. ‘Are doctors allowed to go around assaulting people? Or do you think that would get them into trouble?’ He cradled his hand, his face twisted in pain, tears streaking through the mud on his face. ‘You’ll pay for that, you ugly bitch, you’ll—’

‘No, please, please don’t say that – I’m sorry —’ She was horrified by what had happened, by what he had said and what she had done. In her mortification, she reached for him, her mouth open and her eyes wet.

He recoiled in disgust.

Without Grace really understanding what was happening, without intention , her gesture of supplication became something else. Her left hand rose up to join her right and both closed around his neck, her thumbs pressing against the front of his throat.

Grace was smaller than Nick, but he was slight, and he was injured, and she had a butcher’s hands.