Page 58 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

So they might not have been wholly surprised that the facility’s surveillance cameras extended to the local railway station, but the Girl would have been cheered that if anyone had been monitoring them, they didn’t notice that when she went to meet the Boy on his next visit, he didn’t get off the train, but in fact surprised her by appearing from behind her and wrapping her in a tight hug as the passengers filtered out of the turnstile.

“Where did you…?” she began, turning in his arms to kiss him.

“Let’s go have lunch by the harbour,” he said,

“Did you get an earlier train?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “But I’m starving.”

And he wouldn’t tell her how he’d magically appeared from the wrong direction, no matter how much she asked or prodded him. If she hadn’t been so pleased to see him she’d have found his silence unbearably smug and irritating, but she decided he would tell her when he wanted to, so let him play whatever game he was getting so much pleasure out of. They ate outside the pub overlooking the harbour, and had got to coffee before he broke.

“Can you honestly not see it?” he said. “Come on!”

She leaned in and whispered in his ear.

“I saw it while you were getting the beers,” she said.

“Well why didn’t you say something!?” he said.

“Because you were getting so smug and then frustrated I thought you might pop,” she said. “Also, didn’t want to give you the satisfaction.”

“Mean,” he said.

“That’s me all over,” she agreed. “But you are a genius”

And she bit him, lightly-ish on the ear.

“Ow,” he said. “Bloody hell.”

“And now I’m not looking at her because I presume we don’t want to draw attention to her.” She grinned.

“She” was the Hope, nestled in among the other boats on one of the mooring jetties that ringed the harbour.

“That’s why you weren’t on the train,” she said.

“I’ll go back up to London on it though,” he said. “Mooring’s paid for a year, tanks are full in case there’s no wind and you have to go in a hurry.”

“I quite like you,” she said. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

And they sat leaning against each other on the old pub bench, letting the sun bake them as they tried not to look at their boat and she told him all about her misgivings about the facility, something about GJ, who had just been confirmed as pregnant, and a little bit about how it felt it might alter their friendship now she was still failing to cross that line.

“It’s not failing,” he said. “If it happens it happens. If not, it’s not a failure. And definitely not your fault. It’s just a thing we’ll cope with. It won’t stop us being happy.”

And for a while that stopped the conversation and they just enjoyed the sun and the lap of the sea on the quay and the noise of the seagulls pinwheeling high above them.

“We won’t starve on the island,” said the Girl, after a bit. “Not surrounded by a sea full of fish. And there are sheep and deer, and there’s oats and rye and potatoes, and we can grow vegetables…”

“And since the ferries stopped, they’re all getting much more self-sufficient up there,” he said.

“Those that are staying. Half of them are heading to the mainland, from what Mhairi told me,” she said. Mhairi was a crofter on Berneray who they had both known for years. “Makes sense if you think you might need to be close to a hospital.”

“Or close to the rest of your family,” he said. “People move because they’re worried about getting lonely as much as bad health, I reckon.”

“It’s always felt like the edge of the world,” she said. “It’d be a peaceful enough spot to sit out the end of it, I guess.”

“Be a good life. Even if it does all go zombie-apocalypse in the cities and on the mainland,” he said.

“Are we getting an actual zombie apocalypse?” she said, surprising him by finding a smile that he’d been seeing less and less of over the preceding months. “Cool! Shotgun the chainsaw…”