Ewan appears by the booth. ‘Your chariot awaits,’ he says.

  ‘Och, how grand.’ Cassandra holds her hand out to Ewan and he helps her up. ‘Have a good night, you two,’ she says to Luda and Tristan.

  ‘How old was Joshua?’ Tristan asks Luda.

  Cassandra blows kisses generously to everyone in the pub as Ewan helps her towards the door.

  ‘Three years older than me.’

  Tristan rests his chin in his hand. ‘What do you miss about him?’

  ‘Joshua?’

  Tristan nods.

  ‘Him. Just him.’ Luda sighs. ‘Really, we weren’t well suited. And things were over between us a long time before he died.’

  ‘What else do you miss?’

  ‘Oh, sex. I think. I can’t really remember.’ She frowns. ‘And … feeling like someone noticed when I came home at night. Or if I was stressed. Although he got so caught up in schemes for the farm by the end that he wouldn’t have noticed if the house caved in.’ Luda blows a stray piece of hair away from her face. ‘I don’t miss him like I thought I would. And then I feel guilty.’

  ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty,’ Tristan says, sounding almost sober. Almost. He leans in closer. He gazes intently at her. ‘I didn’t want to like you, you know.’

  ‘Oh, we’re at the drunken sharing stage of the evening. Wonderful.’

  ‘After you took that photo of the cliffs and were so bloody stubborn about it, I wanted to not like you. But I don’t not like you.’

  Luda yawns. ‘You just needed to keep me on side so you could get in to see the witch marks. I can see right into that rat-cunning brain of yours.’

  ‘Well … yes, alright. At first. But then’ – he looks bewildered – ‘I just liked you.’

  ‘I like you too, Tristan,’ Luda says, watching the flickering orange and blue of the gas heater in the fireplace. ‘You’re just about the only friend I’ve made since we came here.’

  ‘No … I mean …’ He exhales, suddenly agitated. ‘I need air.’

  Luda considers staying inside and watching the flames of the gas heater, but then she thinks of how much Tristan’s had to drink and tries to calculate the likelihood of him passing out and losing vital appendages to frostbite. She follows him outside.

  Snow dusts the ground. She wraps her arms around her body, her breath misting.

  ‘You really should be wearing a jacket,’ she says.

  Tristan turns to face her and they stare at each other. The air seems to shimmer with snow and cold. Luda looks away.

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t take the job,’ he tells Luda.

  ‘What? What job?’

  He waves a hand at her. ‘I like you,’ he says. ‘And that’s not just the alcohol talking. I like you.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘I like you too. You ready to come back inside? It’s freezing.’

  ‘Luda … you can be so bloody obtuse.’

  ‘About what exactly?’

  He hesitates. And the way he hesitates is unfamiliar. Luda considers going back inside, the fire, the remains of her wine. And then Tristan steps towards her until they’re nearly up against each other and things rearrange themselves. ‘Luda,’ he says, and his voice is exasperated and rough and warm. She looks into his face – thinks of the crosshatching of too-many scars when he’s on Seannay – and realises that the beat of her heart has quickened. It’s racing.

  He presses his lips against hers and Luda feels her body respond as though she has not been actively avoiding this sort of thing since they came here, and long before.

  He smells like the islands. He smells like whisky and earth and salt. Kissing him erases everything. Kissing him, she feels young again – before Joshua and the drought and the children. She pulls away a little, rests her forehead against his. She squeezes his arms through his shirt. ‘Wait.’

  He closes his eyes.

  ‘I …’ She swallows.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tristan …’

  ‘I get it. I just wanted to …’ He rubs at his nose. ‘I wanted to choose happy for once in my life.’

  ‘Kissing me is you choosing happy?’

  He nods, loops an arm around her neck. ‘You’re exasperating and stubborn and obtuse and obsessive and remarkably good at lying to yourself. But yes. You’re my happy.’

  ‘I’m your happy,’ she says. Had she ever been Joshua’s happy? ‘You’re my happy too, Tristan. You know that.’

  ‘Desperation and lack of other choices doesn’t make me your happy.’

  ‘Well, you are. It’s just …’ She exhales in a rush. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I can’t … not yet … I’m sorry.’

  He gives her a small smile and steps away from her, back towards the pub. ‘You’re still my happy, Luda.’

  She watches him go. The hunch of his shoulders, the way his hair sticks up. She takes a step forward. ‘Wait!’

  He turns to face her, but doesn’t come closer.

  ‘Can we try that again?’ she says.

  He walks back across the snow. ‘Which part?’

  ‘This part.’ She leans in and kisses him and feels his surprise. Then he cups her face and kisses her back and she can feel him smiling. For a moment, she wants to run. She wants to curl back into the life she’s already made for herself. But no. She kisses him, touches his face, his hair.

  ‘Oh, about fucking time,’ Tristan says against her mouth.

  Luda marvels at the feel of him, the taste. How he kisses her as though she’s something precious. She is his happy.

  She is his happy.

  Things that Theo did not tell Carter: in that first year, he would wander the kirk yard as though he’d lost something, peering at the weathered inscriptions beaten into stone. Words he couldn’t read, even if he could make them out. Sometimes, he’d startle and latch on to whoever was closest to him, dragging at waterproof pants and skirts and jeans and jackets as though he were drowning. In these months, people looked at him, long and quizzical, and it felt as though he would never belong.

  He had started drawing in Iris’s kitchen. From that first day, when he picked up a discarded pen and began making large, sweeping shapes on the yellowed paper of an old notepad. Doctors spoke about amnesia and concussion and trauma and repression. There was talk of cults and abandonment and torture. There was talk of shipwrecks and refugees. ‘Your drawings are grand, but you need words,’ Iris had said, when he became frustrated with the letters in the books that she made him repeat again and again. Sometimes, halfway through writing a word, his hand would spiral off and draw curving shapes. ‘You need words.’

  Sometimes, he’d slip away from Iris’s pebble-dashed house on the south edge of the town and wander along the roads, peering into any uncurtained windows and watching the people inside. How they read and stared at their televisions and pressed up against one another. Into one another. They hadn’t often noticed the lad watching through the window, but when they had, they’d been shrill and unhappy about it.

  Once he’d learnt to speak, Theo told Iris that in those early months everyone had looked the same to him. People were little more than a smudging of faces and arms and legs and hair that seemed always to be kicked up by the wind. But, somehow, he always knew Iris.

  Iris is waiting for Cassandra in the living room, stacked cans of soup on the table. ‘Did you manage to set yourself on fire? You reek of peat.’

  Cassandra allows Ewan to settle her into her chair and then smiles at him warmly, pats his arm. ‘Thank you, lad.’

  He drops a kiss onto her head and lets himself out.

  ‘That skirt is truly hideous, Iris.’

  ‘You’ve been at the pub more than usual lately.’

  ‘Aye. So I have.’

  A pause. ‘And?’

  Cassandra shakes her head, frowns. Between them is this: an understanding that there is tension building in the town. An understanding that something, soon, will happen.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MARCH (THEIR SECOND YEAR)

  Joshua had been fireworks and impossibility and never quite making things work between them, no matter how much they wanted to. They did not understand each other. Had never understood each other.

  Tristan is different. His hair sticks up. He still types with two fingers. He touches her, always, like she is something miraculous. He links his little finger with hers when they walk down the street to the cafe. He beams at her with delight as he does his rubbings and measurements of the witch marks. In the evening, they drink cans of beer on the grass. ‘I thought I was done,’ Luda tells him.

  ‘Done?’

  ‘Done. I thought I’d just be alone from now on. And I was okay with that.’

  He snorts. ‘Oh, you flirt.’

  ‘I’m paying you a compliment, Tristan! I wasn’t … I wasn’t looking for anything. I was okay. I’m with you because I want to be with you. Not because I just don’t want to be alone.’

  He thinks about this for a moment, picking at a piece of grass. ‘A lot of people are scared of that, aren’t they?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He turns and cups her face. ‘We’re lucky then.’

  ‘We are.’ Luda leans in and kisses him.

  Earlier in the day, Theo had said breath-steam and Iris had mouthed breath-steam to herself and then smiled. Theo knows that the phrase will be penned into the green notebook that Iris doesn’t know he occasionally tries to read. Sometimes he will ask Min what something means. Words and phrases he’s said that aren’t quite right; that amuse Iris or shock her. He likes to keep track of the list so he knows what to never say again. One day he will rip every single page from the skin of green cover. He will throw them into the wind and all of it, this record of his idiocy, will be gone.

  Breath-steam. The word rumbles around and around Theo’s mind as he works in the chilly, dim day. Spring is late this year, the ground still heavy with frost.

  Theo works as well as he can with his bleeding hands, mulling over the green-skinned book. Gerald pretends not to notice how slow Theo is in his pain. His cursing. Theo can’t tell if it’s a kindness, this silence, or an unusual sort of cruelty.

  ‘You going to stay back?’ Gerald asks him, his voice even. Gerald’s voice is always even. Theo knows exactly how Gerald will be each day. Can tell, just by glancing at him, whether they’ll fuck that night.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Theo says. And Gerald looks surprised for a moment and then he glances at Theo’s hands and nods. Theo is careful never to let Gerald see the extent of his damaged, scarred flesh in anything more than the softest of lights. To be rejected by Gerald Rendall would be a sort of wrongness that Theo cannot even contemplate.

  Theo has heard nothing from Carter since the night at the pub on the northern tip of the island. The stars spangled above the ruins of the bishop’s palace.

  After work, Theo rides to the Blue Fin and plays darts. He drinks and drinks.

  At one point he looks up and sees Min carrying a large sack, her expression fiery. ‘What?’ he asks, but he’s really quite drunk and had thought she was walking towards him, when she is actually striding into the middle of the room.

  ‘Christ,’ Ewan mutters, leaning against the wall next to Theo.

  ‘Sorry, Louise!’ Min calls, her face determined. She then briskly upends the sack into the middle of the pub. Everyone stares at her. In the background, Cher keeps singing about believing.

  ‘I collected this from the water in a single day,’ she says.

  Everyone continues to stare, except for Louise, who is moving swiftly from the bar to Min and the garbage pile.

  ‘I see people dumping rubbish off their boats,’ Min continues. ‘I see people laughing when their bin gets blown over again and all their shit goes flying down the street. And do you know how many cans of Corrigan’s I’ve found in the water? This is the only place on the islands that sells it. How hard is it to just drink what’s on tap?’

  Louise reaches her. ‘Out.’

  Min glowers. ‘Do fucking better,’ she says to them all, balling her sack up and storming out of the pub.

  There is a moment of quiet, once she’s left. Everyone stares at the rubbish, at the cans and bits of plastic packaging and condom wrappers and plastic forks. A ripple of shame, Theo thinks, but perhaps not.

  ‘Garbage girl,’ someone says, and there is laughter. People break back off into chatter.

  ‘Everyone grab a piece of rubbish,’ Louise says. She would not speak to her patrons like this during tourist season, but it’s all locals tonight. ‘Now.’

  And, because even the hardened men from the oil rigs are secretly terrified of Louise, everyone helps dispose of the rubbish.

  Ewan finishes his pint, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and thumps Theo on the back. ‘Goodnight,’ he says and Theo says something garbled and well-meaning in return. He stands frowning near the dart boards, feeling weird about all of it – about the quiet, about Min and Louise and the sack of rubbish. He strikes up a conversation with a girl about his age, a relative of someone who lives near the loch, but his heart’s not in it. If he’d wanted to fuck, he would have stayed late at Gerald’s. He continues to drink until Louise won’t give him any more alcohol. He sings raucous songs with the football team and shares their jugs of ale, instead. He drinks until Louise rings Darcy.

  The phone’s gentle vibration cuts through Darcy’s dreams. He knows it’s late. He thinks, Louise.

  ‘It’s Theo,’ she says as soon as he answers.

  Darcy yawns. ‘Fighting or passed out?’

  ‘Neither, but he’s currently throwing up in the bathroom and he’s about to do one or the other.’ She sighs. ‘I’ve brought his bike inside.’

  Darcy dresses and pulls on his boots and latches the door of the caravan shut. He rides to the pub, careful of the frosty roads. He almost enjoys slicing through the dark streets. His breath a puff of silver. He finds Theo sitting in the doorway of the pub, his eyes closed, his head resting against the doorframe.

  ‘Theo,’ says Darcy.

  Theo doesn’t respond.

  ‘Theo!’

  Theo squints at him. ‘Darcy.’

  Darcy looks away. He wishes the smell of alcohol didn’t make him feel sick. Life would be easier for him if it didn’t. Things would be easier with Theo.

  Theo staggers upright and gazes at him.

  Darcy shifts. ‘What?’

  Theo shakes his head and then unexpectedly rests it against the crook of Darcy’s neck. He smells of alcohol and sweetly of vomit. Darcy wheels his bike towards the causeway, Theo leaning heavily on his other side.

  The tide is out so they cross to Seannay over sand made silver by the moon. Darcy does not bother going into the ghost house. Theo is a loud drunk and neither Min nor Luda like being woken in the middle of the night. Not that Darcy particularly likes it either. He stuffs Theo into the caravan and turns to find him sitting on the end of the bed, studying Darcy intently. ‘Your scars,’ Theo says, lifting a hand as though to touch Darcy’s face. ‘You’ve got so many scars.’

  Darcy flinches.

  ‘I don’t have any,’ Theo adds, his hand dropping. ‘I don’t have a single one.’

  ‘Or maybe you’ve got more than anyone.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. You shouldn’t drink like this.’

  Theo pulls his gloves off and surveys Darcy solemnly. ‘I can be around people when I drink.’

  Darcy takes Theo’s hands in his own.

  ‘Shit, Theo,’ he breathes. Theo’s hands smell like iron and warm skin. They are streaked with old blood. The webbing between his fingers has been savagely, crookedly cut, over and over. The flesh is puffy, colourless. Theo’s beautiful hands. Between them, London. Darcy’s lips pressed to his fingers. ‘Shit.’

  Theo turns his head into Darcy’s shoulder, lets Darcy keep holding his hands. Darcy sighs, nudging Theo up onto the pillows. He pulls the blankets over Theo and then sits back down at the end of the bed.

  In another world Darcy may have slid into the bed, pressed his cold body to Theo’s (always) fiery one. Slept like that. Enjoyed it, even. In another world, it may have meant something or not, but the meaning was not important – the closeness was. The absence of it, now.

  Darcy swallows and slides down onto the floor.

  The blankets rustle. ‘Darcy.’

  ‘Use the bucket if you need to throw up.’

  ‘Don’t need to throw up.’ A pause. ‘Darcy?’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Darcy mutters, tilting his head back against the edge of the bed.

  ‘Why are you on the floor?’ Theo seems genuinely perplexed by this and sits up to stare. ‘Darcy?’

  ‘Because you’re in the bed,’ Darcy snaps.

  Theo climbs unsteadily to the foot of the bed and sits back on his heels. ‘It’s a big bed.’

  ‘It’s really not. Go to sleep.’

  ‘You must be cold,’ Theo says, in that warm caramel voice that Darcy has overheard him using with attractive strangers at the Blue Fin. Theo likes the ones just passing through. The ones who are drunk enough not to realise who he is. Darcy hates the Blue Fin.

  ‘I swear to God, Theo.’

  Theo flings himself onto his back, his head off the end of the bed and suddenly very close to Darcy’s. ‘You’re beautiful, you know,’ Theo says, still in that cloying, caramel voice.

  Darcy feels every part of his body tense and it is an unpleasant sort of tensing. The memory of Theo wildly, angrily kissing him on the lonely island rears up. ‘If you don’t shut up, you can sleep outside.’

  ‘Don’t want to sleep outside,’ Theo murmurs.

  ‘Then. Stop. Talking.’

  The caravan creaks. Something small skitters past and away. Theo continues to stare at him, and then he begins to drowse, his breathing made heavy by too much whisky and beer and God knows what else.

  The night feels hazy. Darcy tugs a cushion down from the little seat at the other end of the caravan and curls up on it as best he can. Beautiful. Darcy considers the word as he sometimes considers Theo’s sea glass, running it through his fingers over and over again.