“Where’s Charlie tonight?” Marly asked me.
I explained that she’d gone off hiking, planning to watch the sunset at Pouque Rock.
Marly’s face went blank and she checked her watch. “That’ll have been high tide.”
Everyone exchanged glances.
“What?” I said. “What’s the problem with that?”
“It means the rock will be cut off from land.” Marly pulled a face. “Do you think she was prepared to get marooned with bad weather on the way?”
I checked my phone. “She’s not called or anything.”
“Shit,” Marly said. “I’ve got three missed calls from her.”
I was already moving. It was me who suggested Pouque Rock, me who encouraged her to get out of the stables more. The viewpoint is only about fifteen minutes from the rock, and—I figured—a lot less if I ran. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there—it’s not like I had any means of crossing the water and reaching her—but I did know that I hated the thought of Charlie there all alone.
I also hated the fact that she’d called Marly, and not me.
The rain began as I scrabbled down through the brambles to the main island tracks. I yanked my hood up and ran faster, heading straight for the coast. The light was low as I wound my way along the narrow tracks of the coastline. I squinted toward the horizon. There was an erratic, blinking light in the direction of Pouque Rock.
It got larger very quickly. I breathed out in relief as I realized a very wet, very angry Charlie Jones was approaching me at speed across the rocks.
She was soaking and still wearing the overpacked rucksack she’d put on that morning for the hiking trip she’d been going on about for days.
“You! You!” she said, the minute she saw me. “Just the person I wanted to see!”
In her sports leggings, with her hair dripping wet and her eyes flashing, she looked like a totally different person.
“Are you all right?” I asked, swiping the rain out of my eyes and scanning her over. “Did you actuallyswimoff the rock and back to land?”
I thought of her on the night of the pig, eyes bright as she speed-read information about pig management while walking backward around the shop. There was so much more grit to Charlie than anybody realized. Maybe even her.
“Don’t play innocent with me. I know you sent me out here to scare me. Try Pouque Rock, you said! I told you when I left that I planned to watch the sunset here.”
I tried to interrupt, but she kept going.
“And not once did you mention any tides! Not once did you bring up the fact that I’d be cut off from land as the heavens opened…”
She turned her face up to the sky. Even in the grainy evening light I could see the flush of anger on her chest and neck.
“Do you really think I wanted you stuck there in the dark on your own?” I asked, slightly appalled. I know I’ve been keeping Charlie at a distance since we met, maybe being a little terse…but have I really given her reason to thinkthatbadly of me?
“I think you’re a standard entitled man who is used to getting what you want, and this new life of yours hasn’t gone quite how you hoped it would, and—”
This time I didn’t let her keep going. I don’t often get angry, but I did then. “You think I always get what I want? You think I wanted to be a sad old lonely drunk? Is that what you think?”
The rain was getting thicker and harder. I was already drenched through.
“I think you don’t want me here, and you found an opportunity to scare me back to the mainland.”
“That’s just bullshit. If I wanted to get rid of you, I wouldn’t do it by recommending a hiking route. Come on, we need to get out of the rain,” I said, striding off in the vague direction of home.
I was a little lost, to be honest. I hadn’t ever walked those trails in low light before, and everything looked a bit different. But I couldn’t go that far wrong, could I? There was the sea, so that ruled that direction out, and any other route would get me back to the farm eventually.
“Oh, so you had something else planned?” Charlie called from behind me. “What were you going to do, poison my morning coffee? Set another pig on me?”
“Isavedyou from the pig, remember?”
