‘It was settling down,’ she said. ‘Maybe it still is. Maybe there will be more eruptions, more earthquakes. That’s why I love this place.’
She looked around. The low sunshine was a warm bath of light, long shadows from the vents turning the rocks purple. It felt like the land was breathing, a heartbeat under the surface.
She brushed the sand from her fingers.
‘It always surprises you. This place can do anything.’
24
‘You have a beautiful home.’
Surtsey turned from pouring the wine. ‘Thanks.’
She took the glasses over to the kitchen table where Donna was fidgeting with a bangle on her wrist.
They touched glasses. Surtsey took a couple of gulps as Donna had a sip.
‘I don’t actually drink very much,’ she said.
‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘It tastes nice,’ Donna said, placing the glass on a coaster. ‘But I don’t like to get drunk.’
Surtsey snorted and took another drink. ‘Christ, that’s the best thing about it.’
They’d dropped Louise back at the hospice, exhausted but smiling. Maybe it hadn’t been physically good for her, using up her reserves of energy, but Surtsey was sure it had helped her mental state, seeing her mum’s face on the Inch made that clear.
Once they got her settled at the hospice, Donna and Surtsey left, then shared an awkward silence on the prom. Surtsey didn’t want to be alone. Iona was working, Brendan was gone and she didn’t know where Halima was. So she asked Donna back to the house, partly to say thanks for helping with Mum, partly for company. And partly because she felt she owed her something. The fact they hadn’t really known each other at school seemed a missed opportunity now. She was easy to talk to, a good listener, and she was the only person in Surtsey’s life at the moment who didn’t know about her relationship with Tom. If she could keep a small pocket of her life insulated from that, all the better.
Surtsey pulled up the chair opposite Donna and sat down.
‘I’ve walked past this house a hundred times on the way to work and never realised it was yours,’ Donna said.
‘Where do you live?’
‘Across the other side of Milton Drive.’
Newer estates, red brick, no character. The houses were the same size as this place, bigger gardens, but worth about half the money. It was amazing how much people paid for a sea view. Louise had got in on the ground floor before anyone had heard of a property boom around here.
‘The view of the Forth must be amazing,’ Donna said, as if reading Surtsey’s mind.
Out the kitchen window now, all they could see was a small scrap of grass and cobbles, the boatshed where they’d stowed the RIB.
‘So tell me something I don’t know about Donna Jones,’ Surtsey said.
Donna looked down at the table and shrugged. ‘There’s not much to know.’
‘There must be something, everyone has a story. What’s yours?’
Donna shook her head. ‘I used to be pretty good at ballet before I got big.’
‘You’re not big.’
‘Too big for ballet.’ Donna took a sip of her wine, licked her lips.
Surtsey tried to imagine Donna in a leotard. ‘What else?’
‘I can play drums,’ Donna said.
‘Really?’
‘Learned as a kid.’
‘Are you in a band?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s difficult getting the right people together. Plus it’s hard to rehearse when you work shifts.’
Surtsey drank more wine. ‘Do you want to work at St Columba’s forever?’
Donna looked up, her mouth small. ‘Maybe.’
‘Doesn’t it get depressing?’
‘I like being able to help people in their moment of need.’
Surtsey thought about that. ‘You’re a better person than me, Donna.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m sorry that I never knew you at school.’
‘I always thought you were the coolest.’
Surtsey had her wine at her lips and spluttered. ‘I think you have me confused with someone else.’
‘You were different from the others. It didn’t feel like you had to conform. You didn’t give a shit about what anyone else thought.’
Surtsey raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure that trait has got me very far.’
Donna sipped. ‘I remember you in the toilets at the end-of-year school disco once. I was with some other girls, Heather and her gang, they were all drunk on cider. They were talking about which boys they wanted to get off with, hassling me because I wasn’t interested in that, saying I was a lezzer, all that rubbish. I was just shy and sober. You came out of a cubicle and just went off on one, going on about how nobody needed a boy to define them, how there was nothing wrong with being a lesbian anyway, how they were all narrow-minded idiots. You started going on about how you were going to get out of this shithole and do something with your life, unlike them. They all just stared like you were from another planet.’
‘God, I spent the whole of school drunk, it seems. I don’t remember that at all.’
‘It was so cool, honestly.’
Surtsey smiled. ‘Well I never got out of this shithole, did I?’
‘Oh come on, you’re doing a PhD, you’ll be set for life in academia.’
Surtsey shook her head. ‘I don’t even know if that’s what I want.’
‘What else would you do?’
‘I have no idea.’
Silence sat over them for a while but it didn’t feel awkward, just as if they were old friends.
‘Your mum talks about you all the time,’ Donna said eventually.
‘All bad, I presume.’
‘She’s so proud of you.’
‘What do your parents think of your job?’
‘They’re both dead.’
‘Oh shit, Donna, I’m sorry. I never knew.’
‘There’s no reason why you would know.’
Silence again.
‘You want to know but you don’t want to ask,’ Donna said.
Surtsey put her hand out over the table. ‘I don’t want to upset you.’
Donna waved that away. ‘It’s fine, honestly. Mum drank a lot. I mean, a lot. I don’t think she was ever happy at home with Dad, though she kept it away from me. They warned her but she kept drinking. Liver failure in the end, didn’t take long.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Dad got a
