‘Jesus. I’m polite’d out.’ He turned his head to regard Ben’s profile at this exasperated exclamation. Ben, apparently feeling the scrutiny, returned the look. ‘Aren’t you cold?’
‘I think adrenaline is keeping me warm.’
‘Huh. What have you been doing?’
‘I’m not sure. I am…uncharacteristically confused.’ He began tapping his fingers on the bench. ‘Miles believes we are all in a simulation—that none of this is real. I was sitting here wondering if he might be right.’
‘Have you been hit on the head again or something? What’s wrong? Are you drunk?’
‘Have you ever had that sense of thinking everything was one way, but it was actually the exact opposite, and you were the only one who didn’t know?’
Ben snorted. ‘Yeah. Funny old thing that. I have.’
He had the grace to curl his lip in acknowledgement that Ben did indeed have more cause than most to know this feeling. ‘I think I have just been outmanoeuvred by two babies. I have entirely lost my edge.’
Ben smirked and gave him a small tap on the nose. ‘That’s because you’ve been rubbing up against me all these years.’
‘Hmm. Probably. Worn down.’
‘Smoothed. Polished.’
‘Perfected?’ Ben laughed, whether in derision or delight it was hard to tell. Aleksey chose to take it as the latter and capitalised on the moment to ask, ‘What are you doing Tuesday?’
Ben hooked his arm over the seat back and replied seriously, ‘You.’
It was an old joke between them, but it raised the smile Ben presumably had been hoping for.
‘After you’ve cooked for Morwenna Eames then? I’ve invited her over for dinner and to see the island.’
‘Huh. Again, should I be jealous?’
‘I sincerely hope so. I also asked her to stay over for the night.’
‘Squeezy’s leaving that morning. He’ll be furious if we have our first threesome without him.’
He was laughing openly now, clearly to Ben’s approval, and gave the muscled thigh next to him a thump. ‘Come. I will do nice with your daughter’s grandparents and some ice cream, and you can go back to being morose, rude and annoying, which you usually are with me.’
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tuesday lunchtime, Aleksey woke to an empty bed and stretched luxuriously in the warmth and space and genuine delight of realising he had the entire place to himself for a while. Or as to himself as his life was likely to get in the very near future. He lit a cigarette and let the first drag slowly out on the pleasure of it all. Pretty much the whole family had decamped to St Mary’s. As Ben was taking Jennifer and her husband to the airport to return to St Albans, he’d volunteered to bring Morwenna back with him. Babushka had hitched a ride, as she was going back early to Devon to help with Sarah’s wedding preparations. Molly and Emilia, likewise, were required for fittings and other mysterious female nuptial preparations, so they were returning with Babushka. Squeezy, making much of his self-appointed role as The Erector (of marquees) was also needed, and Tim, for reasons no one could ever work out, appeared to only want to be where his moronic boyfriend was and so had also said he was leaving. Harry had accompanied them all so he could help Ben with the boat on the return trip. So that left only Miles, Enid, the dogs and the cat with him on the island, none of whom ever commented negatively on anything he did, so were extremely restful to have around. He grinned evilly to himself, plotting—planning—what he wanted to do for the rest of this rare free time.
He could not deny a sense of pleasurable expectancy for the day ahead. Being the sort of honest (and perfect) man he now was, he acknowledged to himself that his anticipation had only one real provenance: Morwenna Eames. If he were another kind of man, he supposed he’d be looking forward to her arrival for a very different reason and not for the one he was. Just because he could, he played back in his mind some of her rant in the fishing cooperative’s gutting shed. Something about the hubris of thinking he could own other people’s land…he couldn’t quite remember the exact phraseology…but he was sureourisland and nothisisland had been mentioned.
He decided he’d take her on the long route around, along all the paths, to all the coves, across from the north coast to the south through the beautiful sub-tropical woodland and include all the sights… He’d shuffle Billy off to the garden with Harry and take her up to the top of the lighthouse. Standing on the gantry was always the best way to see the whole of his domain. He might offer her a go with his telescope…
He was still chuckling over this as he took his usual morning plunge in Clearwater Pond. They’d not had much rain recently, so he wasn’t entirely convinced about the efficacy of this routine in terms of miracle cures for ageing, but liked the effect of the bracing cold water on his skin anyway. He lay on his back, sculling, thinking about this gift of a day—of a life, he supposed. What to do… what to do…
He and the moron had been having interesting conversations about pilings recently—not something he’d ever particularly wished to discuss with anyone before. But he needed to extend the boathouse to accommodate Sticky Wicket, and Ben’s annoying friend had apparently once helped a mate build a boat shed at his house on the Dart. The first things needed to erect a new shed, or extend an existing one, according to this dubious guru, were pilings. As it was one of Aleksey’s principles never to admit to not knowing something, he’d then had to extend his usual vital research topics to include this arcane subject and had been very glad to discover that in the sandy seabed around Light Island it was not a particularly difficult job to provide the sturdy foundations needed to accommodate additional protection for his lovely boat.
He decided to get dressed and wander down to the dock with some of Emilia’s art paraphernalia and sketch out his design ideas. Given he now had free rein to do as he liked, he went first to the house to collect the dogs then liberated a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates for lunch. He remembered in the old days at Barton Combe having entirely coherent conversations with one Ben Rider whilst paralytic on alcohol. He reckoned he could get away with one bottle of wine before his minder returned from his various errands. Whilst he was liberating a bottle from the kitchen, moving others around to make them look more numerous, the thought came to him that he really ought to invest in a wine collection. He went into the scullery, wine in hand and considered its additional door. Pondering what lay beneath, remembering the taste of the woman’s blood in his mouth, he went across and gingerly down the steps into the gloomy interior. It would make a perfect wine cellar. He pictured it racked out full of stores of wealth—as such things as bottles of wine were now being termed. He was fortunate, he supposed; he really didn’t need a way to protect his money, for it was a by-product of the very instability that forced other billionaires to attempt asset management through the procurement of such items. His wealth was guaranteed by war but not necessarily his family’s safety. It had not escaped his notice that for a paranoid, wealthy man with an unusually challenging life, living in a glass house was an odd choice. Similarly, he now lived on an indefensible island—a very attractive place in anyone’s book should something kick off in the world. So not only would the cellar make a good wine store, it might also be a good location for a safe room. He envisioned this concept for a while, imagining Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen’s face when they came for a holiday on the island one day to find such a reality check installed in the basement of Guillemot House. It was so anachronistic an image that it made him immensely sad. Before he got too maudlin and began to question the circuitous path of his thinking that had wound past wealth, took a turn at instability and conflict, plunged into terror and ended up at the need to have a safe room, he decided his precious day was being wasted.
Before he and the dogs headed east to the dock, images of invasion now spinning in his mind, he took the opposite route to Ben’s Bottom to check out Revival Sands for more limbs. It had been unfortunate on Christmas Day, he couldn’t deny that, and Ben’s comment about heads had given him pause. If not for the shoe, the foot might have appeared unrecognisable as what it had once been, hence the family’s slow realisation of its gruesome nature, but it was entirely possible that another body part might wash up that had not had such a battering in the water or been bleached for some time in the sun and wind drying it out so—making it resemble what they had taken it for: a squeaky, slightly macabre dog toy. No, He Who Guards Against the Wolf in Man might well think to improve upon his Christmas offering. A skull next time maybe, with a still recognisable face…tendrils of hair…eyes still attached with threads of ligament…
If such a thing did wash up,hewanted to be the one to find it. As he strolled along, smoking pleasantly, dogs loping at his side, he grinned at the picture of himself striding back with this severed head in one hand, gripped by the hair. Or, even better, using his newly acquired piling knowledge to mount it in the bay on a post: way better than mines for warding off potential invaders. He supposed this was the sort of thinking Ben would want him to stop. Ack, someone had to dispose of bad men, and you might as well recycle the occasional body part that resurfaced from that cleansing. After all, he’d died once and had now come back. This led his mind to drift back to the day of the tennis match with Emilia, and Molly’s odd encounter with the imaginary man. Although he had not put this to Ben, because he was sure Ben had worked it out for himself, it was entirely possible that this stranger andhisrecent return to life were connected. He was not calling himself AlekseyPrimakovany more, this was true, but it was his name, and many people who knew him as such werealsovery well aware that he had changed it from Aleksey Mikkelsen. He’d still been Mikkelsen at the academy. Whether this was because it was easier for twins to have the same name, or because his teachers did not want the other parents to know whose son theirs were being educated alongside was not something he knew. He had only officially taken his father’s name after Nikolas had shot him. But either way, the name Aleksey Mikkelsen, with or without the attached Rider, might ring a few bells with old enemies. Old friends and lovers, come to that.
And yet he did not think someone from his old life would appear to Molly like that with cryptic messages and yet leave her unharmed. It was not the way they operated. Although, there was his in-between life to consider as well—the Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen one, which he had been so recently reminded of by Jennifer’s arrival. He’d certainly pissed off a lot of people in that life who could legitimately have reason to resent him now admitting that he wasn’t Danish Nikolas, sir or otherwise. He smiled slyly and wondered if it was connected to Charlie, his brother’s fiancée. Although he had told this story to Ben, he had not told him the truth, obviously. He never told anyone the truth if he could help it, and certainly not Ben, whose opinion of him actually mattered. He was well aware that some people would argue that trying honesty for once with his other half might improve Ben’s opinion of him, but they would be wrong. As his recent conversation with the moron went to prove.
