‘Did you ever want to find him?’ he asks, interested.
I shake my head again. ‘Wouldn’t know where to start. She can’t remember anything about it. Not even a Christian name. Though,’ I start to say, ‘I do wonder. I wonder what life would have been like, you know, wonder who I am.’ I stop suddenly. ‘I think not knowing where you came from can make it harder to understand where you’re going, to know who you are,’ I finish.
‘Sometimes I think it’s better just to worry about where you’re going,’ he says, looking straight at me, and I feel my throat tighten and tears prickle my eyes. I give a little cough to clear it.
‘What about you then?’ I change the subject quickly. ‘What were your big plans?’
‘To play Wembley Arena, obviously!’ He nods to the guitar, making me laugh too. I suddenly feel very relaxed, like I’m spending the evening with a friend, and a good-looking one at that. Not that I’m ever going down that route again. I don’t need a man in my life, but being friends is nice. I just wish the excitement in my tummy would settle down.
‘So what happened?’ I take a smaller sip this time and it burns less.
He turns with a wicked gleam in his eye. ‘Life.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘And oysters.’
‘I can see that,’ I smile. The whiskey is loosening my tongue. ‘Do you know, when you talk about oysters your whole face lights up. It’s like you can’t help yourself. I don’t get it, they’re just knobbly shells full of slime really. I don’t get the excitement.’ One small whiskey and I’m playing amateur psychologist with my boss. But all the time I’m asking him about his life, he isn’t pushing me to talk about mine.
‘Knobbly shells full of slime!’ he says, outraged but still smiling. ‘I’ll have you know oysters are the food of the gods! In Roman times they paid for them by their weight in gold.’
He nearly knocks the binoculars from his lap. I grab a cushion from between us and hold it against me as I turn to him,interested.
‘Really?’ I’m surprised. ‘I don’t get it. What’s with the whole aphrodisiac thing then?’ My tiredness ebbs away.
‘Well, Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, is supposed to have sprung forth from the sea in an oyster shell and straight away gave birth to Eros. That’s the mythology behind it. And then of course Casanova was supposed to have eaten twelve dozen oysters at the start of each meal.’ He stands up, still talking, and goes to fetch the whiskey bottle from the kitchen. He tops up both glasses. I think about saying no, but I don’t. The burning sensation is less painful now, more numbing. Almost pleasant. And I realise I’m enjoying myself. It feels nice just to listen.
‘But the real reason is that oysters are high in zinc, which increases a man’s testosterone, making him fertile.’ He sips his drink and so do I, to cover my blushes. But my mouth seems to have taken on a life of its own.
‘You don’t have any children then?’ I ask.
‘No. You?’ he bats back.
‘No,’ I shake my head.
‘What happened?’ he finally asks, as if giving me the opportunity to tell him how I ended up there.
‘Life,’ I reply flatly. No matter how much whiskey I’ve had, that piece of my life is still firmly locked away. ‘And a dislike of oysters,’ and we both laugh.
‘Life can be like that.’
I really hope he’s not going to ask me anything else. We lapse into silence again before Sean pipes up, ‘Did you know that oysters have two hearts?’ Steering us both into safer waters. ‘And they change sex every year.’ He leans back and kicks off his boots, waking Grace, who lifts her head just for a second before flopping contentedly back to sleep. ‘The native oysters reproduce during the summer months and change sex every time they do so.’
‘Really?’ I find myself screwing up my nose.
‘Yup,’he confirms and stretches out his legs, putting his feet on the window sill. ‘They can be father and mother to two separate litters in the same year.’
‘Ewww!’ I can’t help but grimace again and he gives a friendly laugh back.
‘Good job you’re off then and I’m not relying on you to sell my oysters.’ He sips. This is the most relaxed I’ve seen him on dry land. He intermittently picks up the binoculars from his lap and looks out.
‘So what will happen when I go? You’ll need help still. Will Nancy move here eventually?’
Sean splutters into his drink, coughing and laughing. When he clears his airways he says, ‘No, Nancy will never come and live here. Nancy hates it here. Nancy and I have …’ He thinks about things for a while, ‘… a good partnership. I grow oysters, she sells oysters, and in the meantime we … enjoy each other’s company. It works for both of us.’
‘Oh, I thought—’
‘Like I say, it works for both of us. It’s a working partnership and not half as painful as true love. We’re friends, our families are friends, we get each other.’ He looks straight out to sea and that tells me all I need to know. It’s funny, now I’m about to leave I start to realise Sean is almost human. The sea is pitch black now. The living room is only lit by the flickering glow from the fire behind us. The moon has come up silver, big and bright, casting a light across the water. It suddenly looks very beautiful and calm. Stars appear all around the moon. They are brilliantly bright, twinkling, and make the sky seem deeper than I’ve ever seen; a blanket of stars that I want to travel through, get lost in.
‘Now you see why I love this place so much,’ Sean says softly next to me, and I nod, not taking my eyes off the sky, feeling like a child enjoying the turning on of the town’s Christmas lights.
‘See that, that’s the Great Bear,’ he points, and I see him hesitate, wondering if I know this stuff. But I don’t. I look at the pattern of stars he’s pointing at. ‘And there, the Little Bear.’ I keep looking where he’s pointing.
