Orkney Twilight Read Free Page A

going in there for a drink?’ He nodded his head over his shoulder at the mock Tudor façade of the pub set back among the trees. She nodded a tentative response. The corners of his mouth pulled sideways into the start of an easy smile, lighting up his face, and she thought for a second there was something quite attractive about him. He caught her checking him out. She flushed.
    ‘What’s your name anyway, if you don’t mind me asking?’
    She spotted the bus lumbering down the road. ‘Frieda.’
    ‘Frieda what?’
    ‘Frieda People. My friend will be on that one.’
    His eyes were on her back as she waved at the driver and waved again to make sure that Becky had seen her, make sure the rider got the message. The double-decker pulled up to the stop. Becky was dangling from the pole on the rear platform, snakes of mahogany hair writhing around her face in the backdraught of the bus’s forward movement. Becky Shapiro.
    ‘Am I late?’ Becky asked.
    ‘A bit. I thought I’d wait out here for you because I wasn’t sure you knew the right stop.’
    ‘Thanks. It’s not that easy to tell where you are once you are in the countryside.’
    ‘This isn’t the countryside. It’s the periphery. It’s all bypasses, golf courses and rubbish tips. And boring bikers.’
    She flicked her eyes dismissively to indicate the rider standing behind, but the gesture was met with a blank stare from Becky. She turned. No one was there. She scanned the car park; the black machine was shimmering under the sulphurous cone of the solitary car park light. Its rider had vanished. He must have dived into the bar while she was greeting Becky. Odd.
    ‘God, I don’t know how you survive this far out,’ Becky said. ‘Where is everybody else?’
    ‘Inside.’
    ‘Come on, Sam.’ Becky grabbed her arm. ‘You don’t want to be late for your own party.’
    The Coney’s Tavern was aptly named: a sprawling, airless warren of a pub that had taken to serving food in an attempt to turn a profit. Jim had objected to the venue, of course. He had tried to dissuade her from holding the party there with his usual combination of sarcasm and casual threats, declared he wasn’t prepared to eat in a place that catered to the golf-playing classes and specialized in microwaving everything to buggery. It wasn’t what he called a bar. She had dug in; insisted it was her birthday so it was her choice. But now, as she peered through the smoke and was confronted by a fug of florid self-satisfied faces, she wondered whether she had made the right call after all. She felt uneasy; she searched for the rider in the crowd, couldn’t see him.
    ‘There they are,’ said Becky, pointing to a long table in a side dining room around which her friends and family were gathered. The white plastic tablecloth made the scene look like a bargain basement re-enactment of ‘The Last Supper’. Becky dragged Sam through the pressing bodies filling the bar and she pushed the rider to the back of her mind.
    She had drunk way too much, way too quickly. The table was littered with empty plonk bottles and discarded plates of sludge and chips stubbed with fag butts. She gazed blearily across the debris at Liz, her mother, sitting opposite; tight-lipped, hands clasped tensely in front of her on the table, recusing herself from the party. Even when she was annoyed, Liz had a natural elegance – unruffled, straight chestnut hair that always fell in a sharp-edged bob. Sam ran a remonstrative hand over her own frizzy locks and, in the absence of any engagement from her mum, turned to look at the far end of the table where Becky was holding court among their mates. Becky was recounting in gory detail the afternoon she had spent at the local hospital, watching surgery being performed on various bits of male anatomy: preparation for the start of her medical degree in September, Becky was explaining. Becky knew where she was heading. Becky was the rising star in their crowd.
    At the nearer