Wide Open

‘Maybe you should step inside for a moment.’

He pulled the prefab’s door wide. Sara saw the picture of the woman with the high breasts. The woman, she noted, was not particularly attractive, which was good, somehow. Even so, she stood her ground. ‘No. I can’t stay.’

Lily was right. He did smell of fish.

Luke scratched his head. What should he do? Trouble was the last thing he’d expected here. He’d come for the emptiness. He’d come for an end to people and their associated burdens and stresses.

‘Lily arrived home soaking wet,’ Sara continued.

Luke nodded. ‘She jumped into the sea. I was very surprised.’

Sara shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Luke seemed harmless. But it was the harmless ones, she told herself, who were the real danger. Was that logical?

‘The thing is …’ she cleared her throat, ‘most of the people who live around here were upset about the nudist beach. It was a concession to the Hamlet.’ Sara pointed, uselessly, because it was pitch dark now. ‘I mean, the fenced-off chalets. And in general the rest of us don’t have that much to do with them. They tend to come and go. Summer weekends mainly. They aren’t what I’d call the community proper.’

‘And the prefabs?’

‘Pardon?’

‘This handful of prefabs. Are we the community proper?’

Sara frowned. Luke was thinking how gorgeous she was. If Sara had suspected, a feather could have felled her.

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly, ‘for some reason we tend to see them as separate.’

She thought for a moment. ‘I suppose that’s illogical, really.’

‘It is illogical.’

‘There’s the boatmaker at the end of the line. Two along. He’s permanent. And then there’s the artists down to the left. But they winter in Ibiza.’

Sara felt like she wanted to sneeze. Powerfully. But her nose was clear.

‘And next to me,’ Luke added, ‘is Jim.’

Jim.

‘You mean the sick one?’

‘He isn’t sick. It’s alopecia. It’s a condition. You lose all your body hair.’

‘Oh.’

‘He’s a nice guy. He keeps my cigarettes for me.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I gave up smoking, but I’ve entrusted him with a packet just in case. I’m actually purifying. That’s why I’m here. I’m downloading.’

Purifying? Downloading?

Sara stared at the picture again. Luke smiled. ‘My ex-wife.’

‘Really?’

She blushed. Luke noticed. He found it rather touching.

‘The only thing I don’t understand,’ Sara said, after a short pause, ‘is why her sandals are unfastened.’

Luke gazed at Sara with a sense of real wonder. And then he said, so softly that she could hardly hear him, in a whisper, ‘Is it you?’

Sara blinked rapidly. ‘Is who me?’

He continued to gaze at her, like his face was illuminated from the inside by a high-watt bulb. The glow of it made her step backwards, although she felt in no way intimidated.

‘We’ve never met before,’ she murmured. ‘I’m me. I’m Sara.’

And then, as if to contradict everything, a wild laugh flew out of her, so quickly, so unexpectedly, that it had filled each and every corner of the room before her own slow hand could move to mask her lips.

9

Jim found Ronny on the beach. Ronny was surrounded by several large piles of shells. It was six a.m.

‘What are you doing?’

Ronny was engrossed. He spoke slowly. ‘You know, one minute I was just sitting here, watching the sea, and the next I was sorting out these shells.’

‘Sorting them? What for?’

‘Into families. Into colours.’

Jim sat down. He took one shell from one of the piles and one from another. He held them next to each other. ‘I see no difference.’

Ronny inspected Jim’s two shells. ‘Then you aren’t looking.’

Jim put the shells back down. ‘So what will you do with them once they’re all sorted?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Perhaps you could create something.’

‘Like what?’

‘People cover wine bottles in them. Or they make shell frogs or shell dolls in shell dresses.’

Jim watched as Ronny picked up the two shells he had just put down.

Ronny displayed them to him. ‘You put these back on the wrong piles. Couldn’t you tell?’