Iona was in the kitchen staring at bits of wine glass on the floor. She wore a tight Ramones T-shirt and black shorts, her legs long and tanned, that snake tattoo up her left thigh. Her dyed-red hair was in a mess across her face. Behind her was a guy, big and dumb-looking, sleeve tattoos and a black shirt, jeans hanging off his arse.
Iona looked up and beamed a smile.
‘Sis,’ she said. ‘Fuck.’
She waved at the floor of glass between them.
‘Fucking broke.’
She put a hand out to steady herself. Surtsey looked at the clock on the microwave, 3:17am. If she’d finished at The Espy at one, that meant only two hours of drinking. How could she be this wasted? Unless she started earlier.
The dumb guy nodded. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey,’ Surtsey said.
Iona seemed to notice him for the first time. ‘Sur, this is Jez. From Sydney.’
‘Sur,’ Jez said, ‘cool name.’
Surtsey scoped the guy with a slow gaze while she stroked the phone in her pocket. She looked at Iona and widened her eyes. ‘Really?’
Iona didn’t notice or ignored it. ‘Join us for a snifter, sis.’ She looked around and spotted a half-full wine bottle on the worktop. She stotted over to it, glass crunching under her Doc boots.
‘I’m all right,’ Surtsey said.
Something occurred to Iona. ‘Hey, is the H-bomb still up? Wouldn’t mind a wee toke.’
‘She’s asleep.’
Iona made exaggerated head movements, looking around. ‘Maybe there’s some shit around here somewhere.’
Jez stood there filling up space, smiling like a chimp.
Surtsey needed to get out of there.
‘See you in the morning,’ she said, leaving the kitchen. She walked into the living room, pocketed Halima’s pipe and grass then went to the front door. She pushed her feet into flowery wellies, pulled on her Parka and left the house.
It was already the next day outside. The sky light behind Berwick Law, orange tracers into blue, high wisps of cloud glowing in the predawn. Oil tankers with their lights on in the mouth of the firth, the street lights across in Fife. And the Inch, a dark presence against the violet sky to the west, an absence of light like a miniature black hole in the sea. Surtsey stared at it for a long time, thinking about the message.
She looked up and down the prom, but there was no one in sight. Eventually she climbed over the wall and jumped down to the beach. She kicked the wellies off, wanted to feel connected to the sand. Scrunched her toes into it then walked towards the sea, the tide well out, a hundred yards of squelching underfoot until the soft whisper of the waves. She stepped in up to her calves, the bottoms of her pyjamas soaked. She held her breath against the cold, felt her heart quicken, involuntary reactions, no thought required.
She pulled the pipe and grass out, packed the bowl and lit it. Sucked, kept it in her lungs, imagined she was made of magma. She exhaled, tried to picture her spirit leaving her body along with the smoke, up into the atmosphere, circling the earth with the air currents forever.
She was really wasted.
Someone knew, that’s all she could figure out. Someone was there, had seen her, and knew. But who? How?
She stared east. The sun would rise in an hour. She would have to get up, go to the office and pretend everything was OK. She closed her eyes and realised she couldn’t feel the coldness of the water any more. You could get used to anything, it seemed.
6
Surtsey stood outside the hospice and tried to clear her head. The small windows of the building’s observation tower were blazing in the sunshine, making her squint. She’d slept for four hours, crashing when the grass buzz wore off. She woke in a fug, then remembered. Ran to the toilet and puked in the sink, tasting grass and red wine. She spent a few minutes staring in the mirror, straightening her shit out, then got dressed and tried to anchor herself to the day.
She had her back to the sea now as if she wasn’t speaking to it for what it had subjected her to. She took Tom’s phone out of her pocket and checked it. Nothing. She’d found an old charger cable in a drawer last night, charged it up overnight. She shook her head at the phone now, lifted the screen to her forehead, felt its coolness, then put it back in her pocket.
She thought of Alice waking up this morning, frantic that her husband wasn’t home, that he hadn’t been in touch.
Her neck was stiff and heavy, and she cricked it as she opened the gate.
St Columba’s was one of four old, sprawling buildings on the prom, nestled between the Joppa terraces at the east end and the more modest buildings further west. In a previous life it had been a kids’ nursery, so had swapped one regime of nappy changing and cleaning up sick for another. Next to it were two privately owned Gothic homes, all steep turrets and high walled gardens, then at the far end was the scuffed up Dalriada pub, wooden pirate with broken cutlass standing outside and sit-in folk sessions most nights. Together, the four houses were like a huddle of dishevelled elderly ladies gazing out to sea.
The hospice building was unique with its square observation tower jutting from the crooks and crevices. Surtsey didn’t know if it ever got used. Most of the inmates, as Louise called them, couldn’t get up the spiral staircase, Louise herself once abandoning an expedition when she couldn’t lift her drip-bag frame past the second step. You would get a great view from up there, East Lothian, Fife, the teardrop of the Inch between.
Surtsey sighed and pushed the front door open.
Effie on reception met her with a smile. New folk coming through the door got the professional face, but
