Light Errant Read Free

just wasn’t the same after dark) and I came into school sometimes looking more bedraggled and hung over than my charges. No one had complained, though—yet—and they had at least offered me that second year, so I had to be doing something right.
    o0o
    The town filled a headland with bays on either side. Deep water to the west gave it a harbour for the fishing fleet, a massive freezing-plant, other industries throwing muck into the heavy, sweaty air; to the east was the long curve of the beach with the promenade above it, open-air stalls and a funfair at the end, also the college campus just beyond.
    Squeezed between the two, the old town was all narrow streets and high stone walls, dark shopfronts and no pavements, unexpected corners and sudden surprises.
    As where I lived, which might not surprise the locals but still got me every time, known and anticipated and none the less startling. On a street like all the others, tight-arsed and dingy and unforthcoming, making no promises, there was a jeweller and a baker and a gloomy ungated arch to separate them. I turned the bike under the arch, saw the light at the end of the tunnel; eight, ten yards of murk and dazzle and we came out the other side into a courtyard bright with flowers in earthenware tubs, hard with light and shadow on the whitewashed walls.
    The girls slipped off as I held the bike steady for them, each of them knew this routine; then I parked in the cool, or the best approximation I could find, the corner that would get no more sun today. Gave the bike a little rub on its petrol tank, not so much a polish as a caress or a touch for luck; and it still seemed strange to me sometimes that I’d never thought to give it a name, we were that close, we’d been so far together.
    I stood in the shadow, the girls were waiting in the sun; and as I came back to them both reached for a hand to hold, and this too was routine, only that there were two of them here today and barely enough hands to go around. Even Sallah’s mouth twitched into something of a smile as she caught Marina’s eye, as they sorted out silently between them who went left and who went right.
    Sensitised to it now, I felt the little kick in each of them as they touched and clung, as my sundizzy blood passed on its charge. Sometimes I could feel maybe a little resentful, that they loved me for my side-effects and not myself; but smarten up, Macallan , what’s personality if it isn’t the sum of our side-effects? And besides, they didn’t love me at all, and it really didn’t matter. I didn’t love them either. We were just good bunkmates, nothing more...
    Had been just good bunkmates, or so I’d thought. So I’d thought I wanted. Today, obviously, was nothing to do with bunking. Something more there was, then, after all; I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut that they were about to call in a presumptive debt, and what could I do but pay up?
    o0o
    My room in the house had its own entrance, at the top of an iron staircase that spiralled up one corner of the courtyard. There were geraniums in pots on every step, which made climbing it a hazard in the drunken dark, and an exercise in strict single file even now. We went up hand in hand, though, Marina leading: and this was how it always was with either girl individually, we went up linked but she led me and always I led Sallah.
    Barely space for three of us on the little landing at the top, and here too an established routine played itself out. I wasn’t allowed to let go of either girl’s hand; it was Marina who grinned with an extra wickedness today as she slipped her fingers into my pocket and fished for the keys, as she worked the door open one-handed and tugged us all inside.
    Routine said we should cross the threshold kissing; at least she didn’t insist on that. Instead she let me go and took Sallah from me also, took both her hands and pulled her over to the bed. Marina sprawled,