Losing You Read Free Page B

slim, still boyish-looking, but his unruly hair was shorter and streaked with grey, and there were crow’s feet round his eyes and brackets round his mouth. I tried to fit this fortyish face with the smooth, eager one from the past, and I could feel him doing the same with me. Our ghosts were with us. We walked along the sea wall, with the tide going out and the lovely light of a May early evening gradually thickening into dusk, and we talked or sometimes were silent. He told me the names of the birds that glided on the currents, although as an islander I was the one who should have known. But that became part of the flirtatious joke. He came back and had a glass of wine at my house; he played a computer game with Jackson (and lost), and when he met Charlie, who burst into the room with mud on hershoes and a dangerous glint in her eyes, he was gravely friendly without being sycophantic or matey. He rang me almost as soon as he had left the house. He told me he was crossing the causeway and the water was nearly over the road, and would I invite him for dinner the next day? He would bring the pudding and the wine, and what did the children like to eat?
    I set off once more, turning inland, to drive through the centre of the town, past the shops and the church, the garage, the old people’s home, the garden centre; past the building that had been going to be Rory’s seafood restaurant and now had a ‘To Let’ sign swinging in the wind above its blank windows. I already felt slightly detached from it all, as if I were five miles high and safely away. Mixed with the detachment was a twinge of guilt. I’d dropped Jackson off with his best friend, Ryan, just after breakfast and promised to collect him very soon. ‘Soon’ is an elastic concept but I’d heard Ryan’s mother, Bonnie, talk about Christmas shopping and the day was advancing. I got to Ryan’s house in just a few minutes – practically everywhere on Sandling Island was a few minutes’ drive from everywhere else – and knocked on the door. I was carried inside on a wave of apologies.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to Bonnie. ‘You were going out. I’ve sabotaged your day.’
    ‘It’s no problem,’ Bonnie said, with a smile.
    That made it even worse. Even though we’d been on the island for less than two years I still felt I was finding my feet, but Bonnie had been one of the people I had decided would be my friend. She was in the same position as me – bringing up a young son alone – and she was doing it with uncomplaining cheerfulness. She had short hair and a pale face with redcheeks and she was quite large and I felt that it wouldn’t take very much makeup to turn her into a circus clown.
    ‘But you said something about Christmas shopping?’
    ‘That’s right. I have a rule, or maybe it’s more of a challenge: all Christmas shopping has to be done in one day. And this is the day.’
    ‘Or, in fact, half a day, in this case,’ I said anxiously.
    ‘Three-quarters of a day. It’s not eleven yet. Which is plenty. Ryan and I are heading into town and we’ll be back in about six hours, laden like packhorses.’
    ‘So I’d better say happy Christmas,’ I said, ‘and a happy new year and everything.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Bonnie. ‘You’re flying off. That’s the way to turn forty. I’m so sorry I can’t get to –’ She stopped.
    ‘Get to what?’ I said.
    ‘I mean, that we won’t get to see you over the holiday. But let’s meet up properly in the new year.’
    I said I’d like that. Then I went to retrieve Jackson from where I’d left him, in front of a computer game with Ryan, who grunted but barely looked up as we gave Bonnie a Christmas-and-new-year hug and went out. When we were back in the car, Jackson retrieved another miniature computer game from his pocket and started to play. I glanced across at his serious face, the tip of a pink tongue sticking out in ferocious concentration and his lick of black hair tickling