‘What’s going on, Sur?’
‘Nothing.’
Surtsey clambered out, stumbling on the motor block, still half asleep.
‘OK,’ Iona said. ‘That’s why your boyfriend and BFF have been running around for half an hour looking for you. And that’s why you’re sleeping in a boat.’
Surtsey rubbed her eyes and looked outside. Cloudless sky, calm. ‘I couldn’t sleep last night so came out to get some air. Ended up here. No big deal.’
‘Whatever.’
‘I was drunk and stoned.’
Iona smiled. ‘That’s more like it. Speaking of which I’m making Bloody Marys for breakfast. Want one?’
Surtsey shook her head. Her hand went to her leg, felt the phone in her pocket through the material.
‘Suit yourself,’ Iona said, swaggering out of the shed.
As soon as she was gone Surtsey took the phone from her pocket. No messages.
‘Hey.’ Halima was at the door, still in her pyjamas.
Surtsey put the phone away. ‘Hey.’
‘You OK?’
‘Fine.’
Halima raised her eyebrows. ‘This is me you’re talking to, not skankypants.’
Surtsey sighed. ‘I just fell asleep.’
‘Out here?’
‘Maybe I was shaken up by yesterday, that’s all.’
Halima rubbed Surtsey’s arm. ‘Don’t make a habit of it. Brendan has been panicking since he woke up and you weren’t there.’
‘I’m allowed to do things without him.’
‘He was just worried,’ Halima said. ‘You seem a bit spaced.’
Surtsey laughed. ‘That’s thanks to your grass.’
Halima held her hands out. ‘Fair point.’
‘Where’s Brendan now?’
Halima nodded past the house. ‘He went along the beach, thought you might’ve gone for a walk to clear your head.’
‘That’s not a bad idea.’
‘He tried calling but you didn’t have your phone with you.’
Surtsey resisted the urge to touch Tom’s mobile in her pocket. Had Halima seen her slip it in there when she came in?
‘I’ll go find him,’ she said.
*
She didn’t bother to get changed, just threw her old hoodie on and tied her hair up in a bun. She called him but he was way along at the west end by the amusements. She padded up the prom in her crocs, staring at the phone messages from last night. She stopped at the green van and got two coffees then slipped through the gap in the sea wall and onto the sand. The prom was busy with commuters, cyclists, old folk heading to the swimming pool, in comparison the beach was nearly empty. The tide was way out and she scuffed down to the wet sand, squishing the squirmy piles left by lugworms, squelching over bladderwrack. There was something about being the first one to spoil a stretch of flat sand, to leave your mark. She looked at her trail of footprints and thought about the sand on the Inch, her walk away from Tom’s body. Below high tide, no trace. Maybe.
She saw Brendan at the groyne at the bottom of Bath Street, held the two coffees up for him to see.
When she reached him he put on a self-deprecating smile. ‘There you are.’
Surtsey tilted her head and handed him a cup. ‘Here I am.’
‘I was worried sick.’ He was joking, laughter in his voice, but she could tell he really had been worried.
She sipped coffee and linked her arm through his as they walked back along the sand. A handful of mallards were bobbing on the water. They looked too small for the expanse of the firth. The Inch was over to their left, a thin haze stretching from Burntisland and blurring its edges, making it more like a ghost than a solid presence.
‘It’s mad to think we were out there yesterday,’ Surtsey said.
‘Is it?’
‘How many millions of tons of water are in the Forth, do you think?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Do you think there will ever be other new islands?’
‘Maybe.’
There had been several major eruptions since the Inch was born but none had created landmass above sea level. Each had formed underwater humps that meant shipping channels had to be changed, and maritime authorities constantly checked and updated their maps as volcanic matter eroded or shifted. Most ships avoided the southern side of the firth altogether, heading north around Inchkeith on their way to the oil terminal.
‘Imagine the land always changing under your feet,’ Surtsey said.
‘What?’
‘If none of this was solid, if the land shifted and moved.’
‘It does,’ Brendan said. ‘It’s called geology. It’s what we study.’
Surtsey smiled and shook her head. ‘No, I mean all the time, like the tides. If we woke up in the morning and everything outside the window had changed, the landscape altered when we weren’t looking, all the maps of the world constantly out of date. What if we didn’t know the shape of the world at all, how would we do anything? How would we know where we were?’
Brendan stopped walking and Surtsey did too, their arms still entwined.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Brendan said.
‘I wish people would stop asking that.’
Something caught Surtsey’s eye, a dozen people clustered around the boat lock-up next to the Beach House. A couple of police officers appeared at the end of Bath Street and headed towards them in no hurry.
Surtsey began walking towards the activity, Brendan in her wake. She trudged up the sand leaving deep heel prints, slowing as she hit the dry sand.
It was the Children of New Thule protesting by the fenced-off yard where the Edinburgh Uni boat was stored, along with all the boats and kayaks of the sailing club. Two young women were chained to the gate, stopping someone getting in. Red paint had been thrown through the chain links of the fence, splattered on the grass, streaked across three boats, including the Geophysics Department one. The police were shaking their heads, speaking into radios, fingers tucked under armpits. They were wearing too many clothes for summer. One of the cops approached Bastian, standing to the side of the rest. Surtsey noticed that he hadn’t chained himself to anything.
As she came off the sand onto the promenade she recognised the
