Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection: Moon Island, Sunrise, Follies

‘Nope.’

‘Right.’ She walked off without a backward glance, with Sam close behind her.

The rest of them stood up too, hoisting bags on their shoulders and murmuring their thanks in Marian’s direction, before melting away across the crescent of sand. May knew they were making for a more secluded part of the beach, or maybe someone’s bedroom where they would not be interrupted. They would drink and smoke some more draw, and talk and snigger, and while she longed to be included she despised them at the same time for the repetitive dullness of their pleasures.

The young people moved away in a dark mass. The diminished group of eleven adults remained, plus Lucas, sitting alone. May shot a glance at him. His arms were wrapped around his knees and he stared into the fire. Now, May thought, if I am ever going to.

She had drunk two bottles of beer and she couldn’t remember how much red wine, covertly, while her father’s attention was turned elsewhere. The mixture lay uneasily in her stomach, but it had the effect of dividing her thoughts from the rest of her weighty self. She felt clear in the head and quite untroubled, with the knowledge that whatever she did or whatever happened wouldn’t matter much. Not enough to worry about. Not enough to care about.

She slid across the sand to Lucas’s side. ‘Hi.’

He rolled his head on his knees to look at her. ‘Oh. Hi.’

She waited a minute or two, giving him a chance to get used to her being there. No one else was looking at them. ‘She can be like that you know. She doesn’t mean to hurt people, not really. It’s like just sometimes she has to be a bitch. Kind of a power thing.’

The fire was dying into dull crimson embers. Flakes of ash twirled like snowflakes and settled on the sand. May raked and sifted sand through her fingers, looking anywhere but at his face.

At last Lucas sniffed and rubbed his cheek with the flat of one hand. ‘You want to come for a walk or something?’ he asked. ‘I feel like getting away from here.’

May waited a decent interval before she said, ‘Okay. If you like.’

They skirted the edge of the water where ink-black ripples subsided into the shingle. May walked boldly at Lucas’s side instead of drifting in his wake. They passed the Captain’s House and climbed northwards on to the headland. When she looked back she saw her father making his way towards the beach steps and felt a mean little beat of relief that he was alone.

It was difficult climbing upwards in the dark. Roots and brambles snagged May’s bare ankles but she let them tear at her because she was too conscious that a swerve might bring her into contact with Lucas’s arm and shoulder. A prickle of heat ran down her side at the thought and her scalp tightened over her skull.

Then Lucas tripped over a branch, and he stumbled and swore. ‘I can’t see a thing. Let’s stop.’

The headland rose on one side, a black sweep of trees. On the other was the sea, invisible but always audible. Tonight it made a low murmur like a chorus of close-matched voices. There was a dip in the ground, not much more than a shallow saucer but still a shelter of sorts, on the landward side of the path. Lucas sat down with his back against a tree stump and with only a second’s hesitation May took her place beside him. There was a lightness inside her head now that allowed her to do what would have seemed impossible a day ago. She eased herself back against the stump, stretched out her legs next to his. They sat and listened to the sea.

A year ago, May thought. The last night of Doone’s life. She had drowned the morning after Pittsharbor Day. All the other people gathered on the beach this evening must have remembered it, even though none of them had spoken her name. But she was always there, she must be, on the other side of the invisible membrane.

‘You okay?’ Lucas asked and she nodded wordlessly. She put her head on his shoulder and he shifted his position to fold his arm around her. She felt a jolt when he touched her and she had to look down dizzily at her folded hands, at the thickness of her own thighs, to assure herself that she was still May – that she hadn’t slipped sideways through the same membrane that seemed to grow thinner, almost to have dissolved into nothingness.

The hands were hers. But Doone was close, it was her breath in May’s hair, not the breeze off the sea. The sea’s voices were louder.

Time and space were shifting. Had Lucas brought Doone up here a year ago? Was she living this night now, or the other one, which had somehow swum back again to engulf them all?

The entries she had decoded from the diary whispered in May’s ears. Hot, heavy words that made her feel loose and restless.

He slipped down beside me. We kissed for a long time. I touched him, I made him touch me. Everywhere, and there. I don’t care, I don’t care about anything else.

I love him.

Those three words, over and over, written with such passion that they scored the underlying pages.

Lucas was probably drunk, May knew that. She was certainly drunk herself. None of it mattered. Behind his head, where the glimmer of his hair bisected the sky, she could see an arc of cold stars. May closed her eyes to shut them out. She leaned forward, dipping into space, swimming through nowhere until her mouth connected with his. Warm, solid and a surprised hiss of indrawn breath. She pressed closer, willing him with all of herself not to recoil.

There was a surge of delight when he began to kiss her back. She sucked the inside of her cheeks to stop her lips curving in triumph. It was not a matter of scraped mouths and clashing teeth, which was all she had known of kissing before. It became simple and imperative, like drinking when you were thirsty. Only it made you thirstier still. It wouldn’t be enough, even if you drank until the water ran out of your mouth.

Lucas stretched himself on the ground in the shelter of the hollow and drew May down in the circle of his arms. She measured herself against him, gleefully registering soft and hard. His hand found a breast. ‘How old did you say you were?’

‘Uh, fifteen, nearly sixteen.’ He had forgotten; she had told him the truth once before.

‘Jesus.’ He breathed the word into her mouth but he didn’t lift his hand. His fingers teased in a slow circle so that her back arched upwards to meet him as he leaned over her.

She opened her eyes and saw the stars again. Don’t move, she warned them. Stay frozen like this for ever.

Lucas’s long leg rested over her hip now. His hand was in her hair, she was fastened to him. There was a trace of sourness in his mouth. His fingers were busy at her shirt front.

I touched him everywhere, and there.

May knew what she should do. Lightly, with her breath locked in her chest, she trailed her fingers down to the belt of his jeans. Don’t let me fumble, she prayed.

Was this what Doone had done?

The leather tongue was awkward, clamped in the buckle’s ridges. One-handed, Lucas undid it for her. A minute’s exploration yielded folds of cloth, then what she had expected to find. Only more solid than in her imaginings and somehow more brutal.

She didn’t know what to do now. She had forgotten how to breathe and her stomach was churning. Her mouth dried and she drew her head back a fraction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement between the trees. She struggled to sit upright as words broke out of her mouth. ‘There’s someone there.’

Lucas lifted himself on one elbow and scanned the silent woodland. ‘No, there isn’t. There’s nobody.’

‘Someone was watching us.’

The note in her voice made him shield her with his arms. He found that she was shivering. ‘It’s okay. C’mon, look. We shouldn’t be doing this, anyway. I’m really sorry.’

Whatever it was must have been in her imagination. May threw herself down again into the mould-scents of dead leaves, knowing the thread was broken, torn between despair and relief. Lucas lay back too and held her against him. He had done up his jeans and now he began to button her shirt for her.

‘Don’t be kind,’ she begged. ‘I don’t want you to be kind.’

A door had opened on to a new landscape and had slammed shut again before she had a chance to take in the view.

He smoothed her hair, tidying strands of it away from her open mouth, the embodiment of kindness. ‘Why not? You’re really nice, aren’t you? Much nicer than your sister.’

The clarity had all gone. Her face felt swollen and a tide of nausea and longing and revulsion swelled inside her. She lay still in order to contain it, and made herself listen to the sea and the minute crackling and sighing of the woodland. She was wrung out by this confusion of the explicable and the unknown. After a while Lucas’s hand faltered, then stopped in mid-stroke of her hair. From the rhythm of his breathing she could tell he was falling asleep. ‘Talk to me. Tell me about something.’

‘Sure.’ His voice was blurred. ‘Tell you about what?’

‘Last year.’

‘Uh. What about it?’ He was yawning under his breath. There was no shadow, no weight pressing on him – there couldn’t be.

‘Doone. Will you tell me what she was like?’

They were lying so close that his twitch of surprise passed straight into her. ‘Doone, why? She was kind of just a kid. I didn’t really know her. It was sad when she drowned but – you know, it was an accident. It was exactly a year ago, come to think of it.’

‘I know,’ May said.

I made him touch me. Everywhere, and there.