‘So you were…’ I can do this. Concentrate. Elliot waits for me. ‘Nine? When your school took you to Paris?’
‘That’s right.’
I don’t know which competing feeling wins out; sympathy for little homesick Elliot or amazement that I got that simple bit of mental arithmetic right first time.
‘And here’s me thinking our school trips to Melrose Abbey and Robert Smail’s Printing Works were awesome,’ I say. Actually, they were. Seeing a nineteenth-century printing press at work was kind of mind-blowing for ten-year-old me, and definitely a formative experience in my love of old books, but still,Paris!
Elliot’s not stopping, and he’s turned to face me a little, addressing this all to me. ‘My favourite was Livraria Lello in Portugal. I spent the entire day there a couple of summers back. Have you seen it?’
Course I haven’t. ‘Haven’t even heard of that one.’
‘It looks like a wedding cake from the outside and a gothic cathedral inside. It’s all stained glass ceilings and winding staircases and wall to wall treasures. I bought a cigar in the café there, don’t even smoke, but in my head I’d become Ernest Hemingway or something.’ He laughs lightly, and I love the way the amber in his eyes flashes.
‘You were alone there too?’
‘Uh, no, I went with my ex.’ Just like that, the magic of listening to Elliot speak and the light in his eyes ends and I see him retreat again. ‘Sorry, I was talking too much.’ I get the impression he means he’ssaidtoo much.
‘No, you were talking just the right amount. I liked it.’
His eyes search my face and I can’t work out if he’s trying to suss out whether he can trust me with his stories or whether he can trust himself not to spill any more of them, but I can tell what he concludes when he stands up and slaps his hands to his thighs, and says, ‘Sea’s coming in.’
I pack away my disappointment, trying to keep the mood light. ‘That’s a shame. I’ve wanted to paddle in the sea all day long.’
‘Good idea,’ Elliot says, and he reaches his hand down to pull me up.
‘Oh, right,’ I mumble, trying not to think how his big hand makes mine look tiny in comparison. I let him lift me, but still stumble a little, which is dangerous when I’m right on the precipice.
A few moments later and he’s led the way along the harbour wall. There’s a string of white bulbs glowing into the twilight and a big lantern behind us that serves as a kind of mini lighthouse for boats searching for the harbour mouth. The lantern must have burst into light at some point as we ate but I couldn’t tell you when. I’d been distracted.
As we pass the pub, sea shanties and chatter spill out. ‘Lively for a Monday night,’ Elliot says. ‘Hold on, I’ll be back in a sec,’ and he nips into the bar.
I dump our chip wrappers and cans in the bin by the door, glad of a quiet moment to collect myself because he’d gripped my hand for the tiniest fraction of a second too long after I got to my feet, and I’m sure we had a moment where I was looking up into his face and he was peering down at me with narrowed, intent eyes. That or because he wasn’t wearing his specs, his eyes were adjusting to my proximity in the dull light… or maybe he had a stray hair in his eye? Yes, that’s likely what it was. Anyway, my hand’s still sort of tingling. ‘Oh no,’ I mutter to myself. ‘That’s not good.’
‘What isn’t? Don’t you like beer?’ I spin around to see Elliot with a frothy pint in each hand and a grin on his face. ‘I figured we’ve earned these.’
‘Wellyouhave. I didn’t do anything heroic today.’
He laughs, a little abashed, as he hands a glass over.
‘You’re an actual doctor of something lifesaving. What can I do? Prescribe you a poem? Suture you with a sonnet?’
‘Words are just as important as medicine, for healing,’ he says, eyes dark again, and he takes a drink of beer before changing the subject again – something, I’m noticing, he’s rather good at doing. ‘Right, paddling! Come on.’
It isn’t easy making our way over the beach; I stumble a few times over the big pebbles that make up the shore. I resent spilling nearly a third of my beer and decide to drink what’s left as fast as I can with one foot on the edge of a small boat that’s stranded far up the beach. ‘To prevent spillage,’ I say. ‘Cheers.’ Elliot joins me, raising his glass to mine and then draining it with a big gulp.
It’s hard to make out the rusting chains leading from the little boats all the way to the sea wall from where they’re moored, but we take our time scrambling over them in the dark on our way to the water’s edge.
‘What were they called?’ I say, as we leave the pebbly bit of the beach behind us and hit the wet sand and I immediately untie my Converse. ‘The dogs your parents gave you?’
‘Oh,’ Elliot laughs before he answers. ‘A pug called Andrew, and a shih tzu called Selina.’
‘Uhh, ok-ay.’
‘What! I was just a kid! Actually, Selina was an au pair my parents hired when I was in pre-prep school. I had the biggest crush on her. She left when I was seven, broke my heart.’
‘So you named your dog after her.’
‘Never forgot her.’
