Blood, Salt, Water Read Free Page B

lunch, Boyd let his weight shift to his back foot, moving behind the counter. ‘Do you still sail?’
    ‘No, our boathouse is empty now. Mother sold them when I left for the States.’
    ‘We have a boat, if you’d like to go out?’ The offer was no sooner out of his mouth than he wished it back. He saw her eyes widen, wonder, file the invitation away for possible use later. Boyd didn’t sail for company. He was dreading his boys being old enough to go out with him.
    ‘Maybe, another time,’ she said. ‘Thanks, Boyd, it’s kind of you.’
    He wanted to change the subject. ‘Were you an Akela out in the States?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I gave it up when I moved. I loved it, though, while I did it. Gave me real confidence.’
    ‘Leader of the pack?’
    ‘I’m not much of a leader, but, you know.’ She warmed at the memory. ‘It gave me such courage just to go off and do things. Super thing for a young woman to have, that confidence. Good for me. My mother made me do it because I didn’t go to uni with my friends, you know, “Do something, Susan!” ’ Miss Grierson launched into a dull reminiscence about her mother giving her advice and how it was good advice or something, but Boyd wasn’t listening any more. He picked up the mezzaluna again, holding it loosely with one hand. It was a prompt to her, to say goodbye, but she was talking without heeding the listener, rolling through a story to please herself, the way old people did.
    Boyd raised the mezzaluna slowly, waiting until the end of the story. She got there, looked at the knife and then around the shop.
    ‘So,’ she said vaguely, ‘d’you have a job for me?’
    Very American. Forthright and unembarrassed. Quite unattractive.
    ‘You can’t need the money?’ He looked at the teenage waitresses on the floor and dropped his voice to a murmur. ‘Miss Grierson, the money I pay is crap.’
    She smiled. ‘Call me Susan, please. No, but I need to dosomething. I can’t bear the thought of working in a charity shop. The people in them are all my age. I like a mix.’
    Boyd grinned at her: every second shop in the town was a charity shop. They were staffed by retired people volunteering for a few hours a week. Most of their stock came from post-mortem house clearances and the ring of old folk’s homes that circled the town, ornaments and personal effects the families didn’t want back, after.
    He leaned in and whispered, ‘It’s the half - dead selling the knick-knacks of the dead to the almost dead.’
    They both tittered, she with shock at his maliciousness, he with discomfort. He’d said it often but he wished he hadn’t said it now. It was quite nasty, and she was decent, so it mattered.
    ‘That’s what people call it here, anyway.’ He was lying. The line was his.
    She looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s a bit mean!’
    Boyd pretended to think about it for the first time. ‘Actually, it is a bit mean. I could do with a hand tomorrow evening, if you’re free?’
    She seemed disconcerted by that and looked around the café. ‘Are you open in the evenings?’
    ‘No. We’re catering a dinner dance at the Victoria Halls. Charity. Raising money for a children’s hospice. I need someone to stand with a clipboard and mark off the tables as they get served, time it so that no one is waiting too long between courses. Think you can do that?’
    He saw her fingers close over the edge of an imaginary clipboard. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think I can manage that, yes.’
    ‘Righto, Miss Grierson. Be here at five thirty, then. And wear black.’
    ‘Please, Boyd, call me Susan.’
    ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I like “Miss Grierson”.’

 
    4
     
    In the van, driving back.
    Tommy and Iain were heading out of the wild, back to Helensburgh on a road that cut through chocolate-box Scotland. On high, rugged hills mist clung to the lochans and rain blackened the stone cliffs.
    Iain had a barb in his throat. The lassie, the dead lassie, her breath was