The Winter Sea

She told me, ‘If you’re so inspired here, you ought to move to Scotland. Buy a little house. There’s one the next street over, coming up for sale.’

Jane’s husband Alan had been clearing dishes from the table where we’d eaten lunch, but now he felt the need to interject, ‘She wouldn’t want to live the next street over, Janie.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d hardly make yourself invisible, would you? You’d be over there the whole time, nagging. “How’s it going with the book?” and “When will it be finished?”’

‘I would not.’ Jane tried her level best to look indignant.

‘Besides which, Carrie needs her privacy.’

‘She’d have it.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Alan gave his wife a sideways glance. ‘You want her to believe that, after all the grief you’ve given her this morning?’

‘I only said she should have let us fetch her and not come by taxi.’

With a smile, I interjected, ‘All that way. It’s what, ten minutes?’

‘That,’ she said, ‘is not the point.’

‘The point is,’ Alan said, ‘you thought she’d bring a man.’ To me, he added, ‘That was why she made the cake. She’d never bother with a cake for only us.’

Jane couldn’t quite manage to look truly offended with Alan. ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for another one if this is all the thanks I get.’ Shifting position, she sent him the same sort of withering glance she might use on a bothersome publisher. ‘Anyway, when I talked to Carrie last she said that she might bring a man.’

‘I did?’

‘You said you’d let me know.’ She gave a shrug as though the wording didn’t matter. ‘It’s the same thing. I just wanted to be welcoming, in case he came.’

Her husband rolled his eyes at me in silence, and I smiled. Jane missed the interchange, because at that same moment baby Jack, upstairs, let out a sudden wail to let us know he had awoken from his nap, and by the time he had been brought downstairs the focus of attention had been shifted on to him.

He was a lovely baby, bright and interested in everything, with Jane’s blue eyes and reddish hair and happy, fearless nature. ‘They’re remarkable things, babies,’ Jane told me. ‘Such little things, and yet once they come into your life they just change it completely. Take over.’

Which led us back to talking of my character, Sophia, and of how her life would change once her child came.

‘I don’t know that I’m actually going to write a scene about the birth itself,’ I said. ‘It isn’t something I’ve experienced.’

‘You’re wise.’ Jane’s voice was dry. ‘Speaking for myself, I can’t think anyone who has gone through it really wants to read about it.’ Giving little Jack a hug, she said, ‘The end result’s all right, but I don’t need reminding of the process, thank you all the same.’

I did convince her, though, to talk a little bit about it so I’d have the knowledge there in case I needed it. And by the time we’d finished talking it was nearly two o’clock, and time for me to leave.

I called another taxi, over Jane’s objections.

‘I can drive you,’ was her protest, as she walked me to the door and watched me tuck the story pages back into my briefcase. It was an oversized case, built to carry my laptop computer and a couple of changes of clothes. Jane wouldn’t have missed that, I knew, but I’d already thought up a good explanation.

It was tricky telling lies to Jane, she had such good antennae that you couldn’t get much past her. I had always found it easier to start with something like the truth.

I said, ‘But I’m not going home. I’m going down to Aberdeen. I need to do some research for the book. Depending on how long it takes to find what I’m after, I might just stay over and come back tomorrow.’

She seemed to accept that. She waited in the front hall with me till the taxi came, then said, ‘Hang on a minute, will you?’ and went back into the kitchen and returned with something in a plastic square container. ‘Here, take this.’

‘What is it?’

‘It isn’t for you. It’s for him.’

‘For whom?’

‘You’ll lose your taxi,’ was her warning, as she ran me down the steps and to the waiting cab. She held the door and saw me safely settled in the back before she said, with innocence, ‘You did say that he came from Aberdeen?’

She’d nailed me and she knew it, but I made a final sinking effort. ‘Who?’

‘The man who took you walking on the coast path. You did say he was a lecturer, in Aberdeen—in history, am I right?’ Her smile was just this side of being smug. She nodded at the sealed container. ‘See he gets his cake.’

And then she closed the door before I could react, and waved me off while I reflected on the great success she might have had if she had gone to work as a detective. Any criminal, I knew, would not have stood a chance, with Jane.

The Victorian end-of-terrace town house had been built, like most of Aberdeen, with granite. Not the red granite of Slains, but a granite of warm brownish grey that gave all of the houses along Graham’s road a strong look of dependable permanence. A holly hedge lined the short walkway that led to the front steps. His blue-painted door had a polished brass knocker that bore not the head of a lion but that of the bard Robert Burns, but I didn’t get to use it. When the taxi door had slammed behind me Angus had begun to bark, and by the time I’d reached the steps the front door had already opened.