Fine, I get it. He wants me to understand his connection to the island, to realize how much he needs to be here. But I can’t, I won’t, tell him my own stories. It’s too private, and I’m still figuring out myself why being here means more with every passing hour.
‘I can’t leave on Friday,’ he says. ‘I know you want me to and I get that you’ve paid and you have a piece of paper to prove it, but I need to stay.’
And that’s where all this sharing has been heading.
‘I see,’ I sigh. ‘And now, because I know you’re a Red Sox fan, you love cheesecake and your mother told you stories about this place, I’m supposed to feel as if I know you and put your worthy circumstances ahead of my own?’
He looks down and sighs. ‘So what are your worthy circumstances? How would I know? I know you’re scared of horses and you don’t like rice pudding. That’s all I’ve got. Go home and meet people, Cleo. It’s too lonely here for someone like you.’
His words hit a nerve.
‘Someone like me? You don’t have the first clue about who I am, or what I need in my life.’
‘So tell me,’ he says, raising his hands, beer and all. ‘Convince me you need the lodge more than I do.’
‘No,’ I say, pissed off.
‘Look, Mack.’ I try a subtle change of tack, scooting forward to perch on the edge of my seat, wine in hand. ‘You’ve come a long way to be here, I see that. You have family connections you want to explore, I see that too. But you know what? You can do that just as easily from the next island across. Go and meet people. Eat steak, drink Guinness and talk about your ancestors. They’ll have Wi-Fi too.’
And there we are, back in our respective corners of the ring. Our eyes clash and I down the rest of my wine, and he heads for the bathroom, taking his beer with him. I hear the bath taps turn and breathe a sigh of relief.
The atmosphere’s too frosty between us to share a meal or any further conversation. Later, he boots up his laptop, sitting on the bed, and I do the same on the sofa. The only sound over the course of the evening is the tapping of keys; he’s disconcertingly fast. Probably just typing random letters to psyche me out, I think, deleting the words I’ve misspelt in my haste to sound efficient. I give up and try to get into a book I grabbed at random from the bookshelf as he was coming out of the bathroom, a war thriller drier than Saharan sand.
Mack heads outside at about eleven and stomps around the porch with his phone held aloft, and I feel a hollow thrill of territorial victory that he clearly hasn’t had any success working out where the boulder telephone box is. A more generous person would probably show him exactly the right spot and how to hold his phone in exactly the right way, but I’m not feeling all that generous right now.
I can’t sleep. I’ve done my best to compensate for the sofa lumps with strategically placed pillows, but I’m not holding out much hope for a more comfortable night. It’s bugging me that he offered me more insights into who he is than I did. I feel the need to share similarly weighted snippets in order to even the scales, but I resent this game of emotional show-and-tell so I’m trying to dredge up three random snippets that won’t give too much away.
‘My first boyfriend, Lewis Llewellyn, was a goth who wrote terrible horror scripts. He was sixteen, I was fifteen. He asked me for my honest opinion on his masterpiece and then dumped me unceremoniously for not blowing smoke up his arse. My gran taught me to knit, and horses scare me because I fell off one when I was eight years old,’ I say into the late-night, pitch-black lodge as I shift into a different position on the sofa.
‘Did he make it as a screenwriter?’ Mack asks after a long pause.
‘Hot tub salesman, last I heard.’
I hear him snort.
‘You didn’t mention your wife,’ I say, before he can ask any more intrusive questions. ‘You said you have two boys and that you love lobster rolls and camping, but you didn’t mention your wife.’
He sighs. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Is that your Facebook status?’
‘No, Cleo, it’s my fuckin’ life,’ he says.
Fine. Despite his carefully orchestrated getting-to-know-you session earlier, it’s clear I’m not the only one playing the cards that matter close to my chest. Keep your secrets, Mack Sullivan. You’re entitled to them, just as I’m entitled to mine. And I’m entitled to the keys to Otter Lodge too.
Mack