‘But we both know how this feels, don’t we?—thinking we’ve been cheated on.’
He pursed his lips, unwilling to go down this rabbit hole of painful memories. Then he cheered up again. ‘I’ll kill the moron for him then.’
Ben removed his bottle of Irish Cream Liqueur from him and stowed it back in the bag Tim had brought.
They landed and decided for the first time to get a charter boat to drop them off on the island. There was no particular need for secrecy now, they would have phone coverage, and they assumed Squeezy would have a boat. With a local pilot, they were able to stay in the cabin out of the freezing January wind with the dogs. None of them wanted to admit that finding the exit from the dock would have challenged them in their current state, let alone piloting a boat across the sea channel to Light Island. Roused from his grief-induced stupor, Tim was now back to being feisty and aggrieved, muttering imprecations down on his ex-boyfriend’s head.
They headed out of the shelter of the harbour and into open ocean. Staring out of the small porthole, in what amounted to little more than a cubbyhole in the hull above the diesel engine, Aleksey saw that the sun was already setting in the west. It was bobbing up and down, up and down, as water slopped repetitively on the glass, slap, bob, slap, bob… Feeling suddenly extremely nauseous and remembering he’d consumed precisely nothing all day except alcohol, and possibly the cream that was purportedly in the liqueur, he was swallowing bile when Radulf appeared to recollect he hadn’t been given any decent food either and consequently gagged then retched in protest. On a final, huge wheezy cough, he produced something he’d apparently found for himself on Dartmoor. The sight of it, a slimy lump of dark strands suspended in globules of drool—hopefully just a hairball but possibly not—set Aleksey off, and he leaned over and contributed to the mess on the floor. Ben, never motion sick, even in rough weather, flushed at this sight, sweat breaking out on his brow. He eyed the bottle of rum he’d been drinking from, swore, turned and spewed it all back up. He’d at least had some marmalade many hours previous, if the orange lumps were anything to go by.
Tim possibly would have still been okay. He was swallowing urgently but holding it in. Until, with a look of horror, watching Radulf, he asked in awed disbelief, ‘Is he going toeat…?’ and then answered himself, ‘Oh, he is.’ He then proceeded to add his contribution to the others’ on the cabin floor.
Both he and Ben had sworn off drinking many times. Many times they’d stuck to these promises—for a day or two. But he could tell from Ben’s expression, an hour into the trip with the smell and the swell and the moaning from their companion, that it would be a very, very long time before either of them even watched someone else drinking. They’d all thrown up multiple times as the little craft they’d hired—the only one available in early January late in the day—at each wave seemed to go sideward as much as it went forward, and jerk round and round in swirling motions as often as it bounced up and down. By the time they’d docked at Light Island, they were all five shivering on unsteady legs. Aleksey tipped the pilot all the cash he had on him, which was evidently a lot if the man’s expression of shock was anything to go by, and watched as he backed into the bay and headed out to sea.
Now they were here, they all appeared to think at the same time that they wished they weren’t. Despite finding the day highly entertaining up to the point of hiring the boat, even Aleksey was regretting hisnoblesse obligegesture of this intervention. He realised now that he’d taken to heart Tim’s accusation that he knew more than he was letting on. Perhaps he was just remembering the younger man watching him dance with Molly in weak shafts of sun filtering through winter branches. Perhaps he’d just recalled that Tim Watson had called him perfect and he was trying to live up to that highly inaccurate description. Whatever the reason, he’d taken it upon himself to be responsible for the cretin’s behaviour.Noblesse obligeindeed. But now he didn’t want to discover Michael Heathcote with another man. Although… He’d rather see him with a nakedmanthan with a woman… With this pleasant picture in his mind, beginning to recover his sense of humour, he started towards the woods and clicked his fingers for the other four to follow.
* * *
Chapter Four
The house was deserted when they staggered in a little unsteady on their feet. Lights were on, so someone had been in recently. Upon entering, Tim immediately ran towards the stairs, presumably to catch his boyfriendin flagrante delicto, and so he and Ben went on their own down the shallow steps into the main room.
It was like stepping back into Christmas. Although someone had apparently removed the tree, the room was still filled by Molly’s vast box palace with its stables and formal gardens. There were two empty glasses on the floor in front of one of the sofas, a partially drunk bottle of wine, and the fire was lit—dying down to embers but burning nevertheless. The scene looked very much to both of them as their evenings in the glass house usually did. Two people. Wine. Firelight. Ben picked up an item that Aleksey had not spotted down between the cushions. It was the moron’s jacket.
‘Fuck.’
He didn’t pick Ben up for swearing. He didn’t feel like it. He felt more like picking up one of the glasses and dashing it into the dying flames. Up until this point, he’d egged on the whole drunken escapade because he’d found it both intriguing and hilarious that Michael Heathcote, aka Michael Staveley-Bathurst, aka the cretinous one, was fucking around on Tim Watson. He didn’t know why this was funny, it just was. He suspected it had something to do with the new level of security he felt with Ben. Other people cheating hadn’t been at all amusing when he’d lived entirely unable to believe that anyone could actually want to be with him. Now, other people’s failing entanglements were decidedly fun to observe. Until the reality of it hit him. This would be the end of his three musketeers. They could not stay friends with both men after a split. And Tim was Ben’s friend, but the moron… Had he just admitted to himself that that infuriating idiot washisbest friend?
He thrust his hands in his pockets, fighting a wave of nausea at this realisation just as Tim came thundering down the hallway and skidded into the room. He took in the scene, watched with horror as Ben lamely tried to put the jacket out of sight behind his back and shouted, apparently at the couch, ‘You fucker!’ and dashed back out.
The dogs, about to claim the sofas as rightly theirs after such an appalling assault on their quiet day, slunk after him in solidarity. With a glance to Ben, which was returned with a despairing shrug, they followed behind the other three.
Tim wasn’t very good in the dark, his eyesight not adjusting well to the pitch blackness of an island night under the dense canopy of the trees. He stumbled a few times along the track, and a couple of falls he took to his knees didn’t improve his mood much. Ben tried to tell Aleksey sometimes that this quiet man was made of sterner stuff than he ever gave him credit for—reminded him that in his youth Tim Watson had been a passionate animal liberationist, the closest most professors ever got to actual terrorism. He’d broken into labs, chained himself to fences, and of course, in the end, had almost been killed for his beliefs. Aleksey took all this attempted persuasion from Ben with a very large grain of salt. Having done the things he’d done in Russian military intelligence, it was like a lion being asked to admire a hamster for scampering bravely on its wheel. However, Aleksey could tell that Ben was worried about what might happen when they did find the one they sought.
Finally, they came to the track that would either take them to Ben’s Bottom if they carried on west or, if they took the right-hand fork, to the walled garden. Perhaps because it was nearer, Tim turned right and began to speed up, but after a few more feet he suddenly veered left and with a hiccupped, muttered, ‘Kittiwake,’ he began a painful sprint then tumble towards the cottage.
Aleksey, still jogging alongside Ben, murmured, ‘Maybe he’s testing all our beds.’ Ben swung out and punched his arm. Ben Rider-Mikkelsen still wasn’t finding any of this comical. They came to the edge of the woods. Tim stopped his careless, headlong flight and stood, hand on a tree trunk, panting. The cottage was illuminated, its soft glow stretching down over the felled trees in front of it, giving it a slightly ghostly appearance in the darkness of the night. Clearly, it was occupied. There was nothing else for it. They began to walk across the clearing.
Suddenly, Aleksey’s phone rang. They all stopped, even the dogs.
He fished the instrument out of his jacket pocket and his eyebrows shot up. He showed the screen briefly to the other two. Squeezy.
Pursing his lips, he swiped and connected and put it once more on speaker, beginning to walk towards the illumination.
‘Yeah, knew you’d still be up. Whad’ya doing tomorrow?’ He felt Ben’s gaze drilling into the side of his head and wanted to turn and explain that if, and it was only speculation at this stage,ifhe was being invited to a threesome with Michael Heathcote and a young Scilly builder, he wouldof coursedecline.
‘Why?’ seemed his safest course of action, as he could tell Ben and Tim were now both monitoring his expression extremely closely as they all walked towards the door.
‘Wassock. Whad’ya mean why? Cus I want to fucking know, that’s why. Sheesh. You in the middle of fucking? Diesel there? I was thinking you should both maybe come down to the island tomorrow—bring the little fuzzy one with you, course. Something’s come…’ The disembodied voice trailed away. They’d started to hear it as an echo anyway. All four men stood regarding each other, the moron in the doorway of Kittiwake a silhouette against the illuminated backdrop, phone held limp in his hand.
Aleksey put his phone closer to his mouth and prompted, ‘Something’s come…?’
He could hear his own question repeated from the moron’s phone as the bemused man stood staring at them. Squeezy let his hand drop to his side and replied without the need for devices, ‘Up.’ Seizing his opportunity, Tim strode forward and took a huge swing at his boyfriend’s head. He was put in an immediate headlock and his hair was badly mussed by a savage knuckle rub.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ He addressed this to Aleksey, as he rarely acknowledged Tim Watson’s existence, especially when he had him in emergency restraint.
It didn’t help anyone’s confusion when Harry stepped out of the cottage behind Squeezy and, observing the situation, remarked equitably,
‘Thatwasquick. Well, how splendid. The wonders of modern transportation.’ For one moment, one moment he wasn’t about to ever share with Ben, Aleksey wondered if he’d gotten the whole Harry and Michael situation entirely wrong. Had he leapt to conclusions about their relationship being one of father and son and they had merely played along?
