couldn’t go to bed either; she felt caught between worlds, as she so often did, present but somehow not fully involved. An observer, perhaps, doomed to watch from the other side of the glass.
The boardwalk was sandy, grains kicking up and rubbing painfully against her sweaty feet as she walked, and she took off her Vans, holding them in one hand as she rubbed her neck with the other. The wooden planks rattled softly underfoot as she padded along in silence, listening to everyone else’s fun and glancing across at the people dancing on deck, demurring with a smile as various drunken invitations were issued for her to join them. It wasn’t the Cannes super-yacht league, by any stretch, but the boat party scene tonight could have rivalled any of the European hotspots. No one would be getting much sleep, whether they wanted to party or not.
The lights were on in almost every berth, except the last two moorings of the final jetty before the ferry docks. Down there, in that one small pocket, the boats sat in darkness and relative – very relative – seclusion. She turned in and walked to the end, peering down into the dark water for a moment before sitting down and swinging her legs off the edge.
She sighed heavily. Sometimes, in moments of dislocation like these, she wondered where she would be right now, if things hadn’t unfolded the way they had. Was she supposed to be somewhere else? Or had she always been destined to end up here?
She wondered what Jack would make of her life now, so different to theirs together – suburban city life, looking after other people’s children, her new friends, nights like these . . . He would be surprised, she imagined, possibly even disappointed. She certainly couldn’t imagine him in this version of her life being lived here. He would have called this ‘settling’ and maybe he’d have been right, but settling was precisely what she had needed when she found herself in the gaping hole of losing him. He hadn’t been the one who’d been left; she had. Not once, but twice now, and there had even been times when she’d felt he’d been the lucky one . . .
She sniffed and pressed her index finger to her nose, trying to stop the tears from falling. She knew what was happening. She was drunk and getting emotional, feeling lonely. It wasn’t an unfamiliar scenario to her, although she hid it well from her friends and she knew perfectly well what she had to do – go back to the hotel and start dancing again, hide the tears with laughter, blot out the pain with booze. Tomorrow would be a new day and she’d feel brighter about things again, once the hangover had passed. She just needed a few more minutes here first, alone, in the darkest, quietest spot on the island –
‘Would a beer help?’
She gasped, almost screamed, her body immediately tense and primed to run as she looked in the direction from which the disembodied voice had come. It took her a moment to find its source – a man, lying on his back on the bench of the boat to her left. All the lights were off, no signs of occupancy. She had just assumed no one was on board.
She stared down at him. He didn’t look threatening. His ankles were crossed and he had one hand clasped behind his head, the other resting a beer on his stomach.
‘Oh my God!’ she whispered, mainly to herself, her hand pressed over her heart as though to still it. ‘I nearly died of fright. I didn’t know you were there.’
‘Well, clearly. I wasn’t going to say anything, but you looked upset, so I thought . . . beer’s often the answer.’
‘Or in my case, the problem right now.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m a bit of a maudlin drunk.’
‘You looked to be having a high time earlier.’
‘Earlier?’ She frowned, peering to try to see him better, but he was largely in shadow. ‘Sorry, do I know you?’
There was a hesitation and then he slowly swung himself up to sitting. She felt herself take a shallow breath as the borrowed light from the other boats revealed his face. His bone structure spoke to a type – finely carved, well bred, privileged – but there was something particularly singular about his gaze. His eyes were a thick, almost creamy, pale green, circled with a darker ring and fringed with