Summerwater Sarah Moss (microsoft ebook reader txt) 📖

already offered him work, they’d have something, and Milly’s right, the schools up there are often wanting teachers, she’d soon find something. You can get help, at the beginning, a young couple and especially once there are kids on the way, and she wants kids soon, she’s always been clear about that. Look, she said, all of five months in, we’ll see how this goes but just to save time, I’m not interested in a man who will never want kids. I like being with you but if you never want to be a dad, it’s a matter of when not if we break up and it’ll be easier all round to stop seeing each other now. Call me, she said, picking up her bag, if you want, and she left the pub, didn’t even let him see her onto her bus. He called her before she got home. He can imagine her pregnant, the curves of her softened and swelling, more belly and more breast. It’s hard to believe that he’s really the one with whom her genes will pass down into the future. If there is a future; it’s not as if having kids is looking like a kind or clever thing to do these days but you have to act as if there’s hope, don’t you? You can’t plan your life around the end of the world. Mind out, he says – she’s leaning her cheek on his shoulder – I just need to chop the mushrooms. Can I open some wine, she says, do you mind?

She needs it, he thinks, to get through the evenings here with him. He’s not enough for her. How will they really manage, on the island? It’s his dad who grew up there, Josh himself has always been a visitor, family right enough but it’s not the same as living there. I love the community there, she says, the way everyone knows each other, the way there are old folk and the little ones at the ceilidhs, when do you ever see pensioners dancing with millennials in the city? And she’s right, it’s great, but what some would call the closeness of the community is also the challenge of living there. No privacy, nowhere to hide: the delivery guys know what you ordered online, the neighbours know when you went out and came home and probably also what time you turned out your bedroom light. Morag at the shop knows what kind of biscuits you like and how much beer you’re buying and people don’t say much, not to your face, but you know that they know. They know that you know that they know. He sometimes thinks maybe the visibility holds people to higher standards but his dad reckons they just get better at hiding and at shame, at seeing and not seeing. Not, his dad says, that it’s not a good place to live, you just need a certain set of skills. A bit like here, really; Josh wonders if that’s why Dad bought the lodge, to remind him of the watchfulness of home.

He hasn’t answered but she’s choosing a bottle, taking last night’s glasses from the draining board. The mushrooms are too wizened to slice so he just hacks them a bit and chucks them in with the pepper. We’re getting through it pretty quick, he says, was it two bottles last night in the end? She’s pouring, red. Yeah, she says, but we started early. Mm, he says, just give me half for now.

She gives him a full glass and a dirty look, wanders back to the window, opens the door again. He sees her through the glass, sipping her wine on the deck as if the background was a holiday ad instead of the weather. He stirs the veg and then tips most of his own wine into the pan because the surprise is going to need all the help it can get.

She comes back in, wet footprints across the lino. There are raindrops in her hair. Even the little Russian girl’s not out, she says, the one on her bike. Well, he says, you were worried when she was out the other night, you can’t have it both ways. You know if we do have kids on the island, they’ll be out in the rain? She shrugs, runs her fingers through the back of the new haircut which is fine but he liked it long, liked the way it took up space. I was concerned, she says, I wouldn’t say worried, you barely see the mum all day and it didn’t sound like a party for kids last night, did it, I did wonder where she was, there was a lot of drinking.

She’s halfway down that glass already. Cheap shot. Nip over and introduce yourself, he says, maybe they’ll invite us next time. If there’s a next time I bloody will, she says, they were certainly having more fun than the rest of us, maybe that’s what we should all be doing here in the rain, having parties, getting to know the neighbours. He fills the kettle. What, he says, him next door at a party, he hasn’t been to a party since 1963. Anyway you were giving me the impression that you were having fun, actually. She comes back over to the stove, pokes at the veg and then pats his bum. Was I really, she says, well jolly good.

Imagine him, marrying someone who says jolly good, even ironically. Just as long as she doesn’t say it to his mum. Or in the hearing of pretty much anyone in his family. He starts a pan of water; there isn’t one that’s big enough to do pasta properly here so it’s going to be a bit gluey. Oh well.

She’s over at the window again. Did you see the baby out earlier with his big sister and his dad, she says, he’s so cute, he’s just learning to walk, you know that stage when it’s basically