“Do you want to introduce us?” I asked.
“I...” Natty cleared his throat, his gaze still not quite meeting mine. “Mum, this is Dominic. Dominic, this is my mum, Susan.”
“It’s good to meet you, Susan,” I said.
Her only response was a faint shadow of a smile that was gone even before I caught it.
“She doesn’t...” Natty swiped his tongue over his lower lip and finally lifted his gaze. “She doesn’t take much in.”
There was a lifetime of pain behind those bland words—defiance too—and I wanted nothing more than to reach out and pull him into a hug. I smiled instead. “That’s okay. I just wanted to introduce myself.”
“She won’t remember,” Natty murmured.
“That’s okay too.”
The Coffee with a Cop thing at my local old people’s home back in Sydney had prepared me for this. I’d drunk so many cups of tea and coffee on those days that my bladder had been in constant danger of exploding. There’d been more than one resident there who didn’t remember me from visit to visit, let alone anything else. But that didn’t mean you couldn’t sit down and have a long chat, or even just sit with them and listen to some old records and look through some photo albums. And hell, there had been a few residents who hadn’t even noticed I was there when I sat down beside them, but the point wasn’t to be noticed. The point was to be there anyway.
Frank wound himself around Susan’s ankles, and she crouched down again to pet her.
I crouched down too. “I call her Frank, but Natty says she’s called Princess.”
She smiled again, and she was achingly beautiful. “Hello, Frank.”
I glanced up at Natty. He looked away, wiping his cheek with the heel of his hand.
“She’s a good cat,” I said, but Susan had drifted again. She traced her fingers down Frank’s spine, and Frank purred furiously.
“Natty!”
Natty jolted at the shout and turned towards his house.
Nipper Will stood there, glowering beside the laundry tub. “What the hell are you doing? What’s Mum doing over there?”
“She came over,” Natty said.
Nipper Will’s glower deepened. “You’re supposed to keep an eye on her!”
“She’s fine,” Natty said. “It’s fine. Jesus.” He sighed. “Mum, come on, we need to go home before Will blows a gasket.”
I stood up, unease coiling in my gut. “Are you okay with him?” I asked in an undertone.
Natty huffed. “Yeah. He’s just... ugh.”
He sounded more pissed off than afraid, which I took as a sign that it was okay. There was nothing sinister going on behind closed doors at the Harpers’ house, just two brothers who butted heads over the care of their mother.
He drew Susan to her feet with a hand under her elbow, and they made their way back towards the fence. Nipper Will glowered for a moment longer, and then turned and went back inside their house. Natty helped Susan step over the fence. I waited for him to turn and wave, or say goodbye, or something, but he didn’t. He just ushered his mother inside, and pulled the door shut behind him.
I stood watching the door for a moment. I had no fucking idea what I was waiting for, but there was a tightness in my chest as I held my breath for whatever it was. Some sign that Natty was thinking of me, maybe. It didn’t come.
Then Frank yowled and reminded me it was time for dinner.
I worked on my map of the island over dinner. Well, over the heated up spaghetti on toast that I was calling dinner. I really needed to learn how to cook better. Maybe once we got internet that moved faster than a frozen snail, I could go online and order a slow cooker or something. That way Evening Me could have a nice hot meal waiting, as long as Morning Me remembered to start it all up. The flaw in the plan was Morning Me—that guy was a lazy fuck—but it was still worth a shot.
I wiped a blob of sauce off my map, shifted Frank’s tail out of the way, and looked at what I had. It was workable. I’d printed out a topographical map of the island, and added as many buildings as I could, carefully labelling them with the occupants’ names. I had about six or seven houses filled in: the Harpers, Amy and Baby Joe, Mavis Coldwell over her shop, Button John and his family, Robbie Finch and his sister Katrina, and Red Joe and Eddie up at the lighthouse. It was a very short list of the people who actually spoke to me—and Mavis only spoke to me to harangue me. The majority of the houses in the village were still blank, and as for the houses outside the village, dotted over the island...well, I had no idea who lived in most of them. But instead of viewing that as a failure, I decided to look at it as an opportunity. Filling my map in would give me a reason to visit everyone, and introduce myself, and hopefully make at least a tiny dent in the solid wall of the islanders’ hostility.
Weirdly, today’s council meeting had made me feel better about this whole situation. Amy, even though she had been born and bred on the island, sure hadn’t been winning any friends with the whole truck thing, and while Red Joe was certainly listened to by the islanders, that didn’t mean they always liked what he had to say. The islanders weren’t a hivemind, even if that was the first impression they gave, and Eddie was proof that even an outsider could eventually find a place here.
I tapped my pen against the northern coast of the island. Seal Beach and Mayfair Bay. Did anyone live up that way? I’d get the bike out sometime this week and go and find out, or maybe Natty could tell me.
