“Aren’t you scared?” she asks Brodie, looking up into his dark eyes. “Living somewhere like this?”
He bends to pick up the rope. Shows he’s not afraid to touch it. “Aren’t you scared?” he says. “You’re just a wee lass.”
“Fifteen,” she says, straightening. “I’m fifteen.”
“？‘I’m fifteen,’？” he mimics, laughing. “I bet it’s a shock to the system, this place. So different from London.”
“York,” she says. “I’ve never even been to London.”
“Yawk,” he repeats, mimicking her accent.
“Sorry, I meant ‘Yark,’？” she says, teasing him back.
He reaches out to place the rope back in her hands, daring her to hold it, and his fingers brush against hers. It’s only a momentary connection and yet it feels like she’s touched raw lightning. She raises her gaze to his. He stares back, nailing her to the spot with those eyes filled with danger. She can tell, in a way that is cellular, that he is taking her in, layer by layer. She craves to be wanted.
“Maybe I could show you some other trees,” he says, the corner of his mouth lifting into a half smile. “Ones that didn’t involve murder.”
“I’d like that.”
Something flickers at the fringes of Saffy’s vision, and she turns to see Rowan standing between the trees, watching them uneasily.
“Hey,” Brodie calls to Rowan. Saffy gives a big friendly “hey there” wave, as if she’d fully expected Rowan to manifest like a dark cloud. Rowan doesn’t respond. She has her hood up, and eyes them both with a scowl. Brodie reads the mood and walks toward his girlfriend while Saffy busies herself by studying the rope in her hands. Her hearing is fully tuned in to the conversation.
“You OK?” Brodie asks Rowan. She responds, but it’s in Gaelic. Angry, hissed words.
“Of course not,” Brodie says, then something else in Gaelic. Rowan arches her face up to his, and he leans forward, pressing his sublime lips against hers. Saffy tries not to look, but she sees and feels it all, the handful of seconds that he kisses Rowan stretching through time, glaciers melting, the earth burning and turning to dust. She imagines that this is what it must feel like to be impaled.
She crumbles the dry leaf in her palm, turning it to fragments.
LIV, 1998
I
Finn apologized for his comment that afternoon. I’d gone back to the bothy and made myself something to eat, though I couldn’t eat at all. He looked shamefaced, his hands in his pockets. I let him in.
“I really didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “Sometimes my sense of humor rubs people up the wrong way. This isn’t the first time . . .” He cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I actually wasnae being serious when I said you were running from something.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t follow.”
“Thought we were having a bit of a laugh, that’s all,” he said. “But I know I go too far sometimes. People have told me.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry.”
I softened. “You’ve nothing to apologize for. I was just being a bit . . . oversensitive.”
The truth was, I was running. But this time, I thought I’d managed to hide it from everyone, including myself.
Just twelve days ago, I had fled in the middle of the night with my girls and whatever essentials we could pack into bin liners. My relationship with Drew had long gone sour, but it was a phone call I’d received the day before that had made me bolt. I’d had a smear test that showed some abnormal cells. They’d called me back for a colposcopy and blood test, which had left terrible bruises all over my arms when they couldn’t find a decent vein.