‘Will you and Karin still be here when we play Barney’s?’ he asked.

‘I guess.’ I stood up and tugged at the end of my shorts. I always seemed to be tugging at my clothes, as if, somehow, this would shrink my size. ‘I’d better go back to the cottage. They’ll be wondering where I am.’

He climbed up the steps behind me. I walked with him to the whitewashed pub where the others were waiting for him. The air was thick with smoke, densely packed with holiday makers. A piper played the pipes and a young girl stretched and pleated her concertina in a mournful wail.

‘Call that music.’ Jake threw his eyes upwards. ‘They won’t know what hit them when they hear Shard. See you tomorrow on the beach.’

The main road leading from Monsheelagh Village was bright with street lamps and a blaze of light from the late night pubs. I left Jake at the door of Barney’s and walked towards the winding road leading back to Cowrie Cottage. There was no footpath, just a hedgerow and tall river reeds. The darkness would have been impenetrable except for my torch. The beam wavered before me as something swift and pattering darted across the road. I walked faster, aware that river rats were probably crouched between the stalky reeds. A car approached, the headlights swerving around a corner. I moved into the grass, hoping my feet wouldn’t slip into the ditch below. The car stopped. A light flared inside when the driver opened the door. I froze, afraid to move forward yet knowing I’d never escape if I ran. Why had I been so stupid? Joan had forbidden us to walk this narrow road alone at night. She had feared a road accident but had not mentioned the possibility of being attacked by a murderer or a rapist. My fears disappeared when I recognised Max Moylan.

‘In you get, young lady,’ he said. ‘Walking a country road at night is dangerous. You could easily have been knocked down. I’m surprised Joan allowed you out on your own at this hour.’

‘She doesn’t know I’m out.’

‘Does Karin?’

‘No.’

‘Did you have a row?’

‘Sort of.’ I climbed into the passenger seat. ‘They were expecting you earlier.’

‘Sounds like I’m in the dog house again.’ Max sighed and slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Oh well, it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.’ He smiled across at me, a gash of white teeth against his tanned skin. ‘Should I duck when I enter?’

I nodded, remembering the book Karin had flung at me with such venom. I was annoyed with him for spoiling the day. He would breeze into the cottage as if nothing was wrong and Karin would forget her disappointment, forget the hours she’d spent watching out for him. Joan would pour one glass of wine after another and make us forget how lovely she looked when she danced in the pub with the fisherman.

It was as I expected. Max threw out excuses about a missed flight. He danced Joan around the kitchen when she demanded to know what actually kept him. Her feet tangled in his steps. It was obvious that she’d already opened the vodka bottle. She looked clumsy and cross when she pulled away from him and announced it was time to eat.

As we ate the cold lamb Max regaled us with stories about his travels. I imagined him in a turban and sarong, sitting cross-legged in villages, recording voices and taking photographs of withered old faces with life stories written between the wrinkles. Karin was enthralled, her hand resting on her chin, her eyes fixed on his handsome face. Joan rubbed her knuckles together when he talked about the elegance of Indian women in their luminous saris. She picked at her food, poured wine with a steady hand and drifted away from us. She lurched forward and fell when she rose to go to bed. The suddenness of her fall shocked Max into silence. For an instant no one stirred. I wondered if he would leave her there, sprawled inelegantly at his feet. Then we moved as one and bent to lift her. We laid her on the bed and Max pulled the duvet over her.

I saw him the following morning sitting on the rocks in Monsheelagh Bay. His hair was loose from the ponytail and looked as if he hadn’t bothered combing it. I’d risen early to draw the kittiwakes and had my sketch pad under my arm. We exchanged a few words as I walked past. The sky was rosy, the sun just up. We were the only people in the cove. Even when I moved behind one of the rocks and began to draw I could see him in my mind’s eye, sitting with his face turned to the sea. So still he could have been carved into the cliff face. He was still there when I came back. I remember making breakfast for him when we returned to the cottage. Later, Karin came into my room and accused me of monopolising him. It was impossible to argue with her. Her father was not to be shared. Her eyes flashed as she spoke, that glacial blue stare that could suddenly melt, like her mood, and draw me back once again into her toxic, all-encompassing friendship.

Chapter 10

The sky was cloudless, the day balmy when I trekked through the shady trails of Monsheelagh Forest with Karin and her father. It was a tough, uphill climb and Monsheelagh was spread like a green patchwork quilt below us when we finally emerged from the trees. Max pointed to a white dot in the distance. Cowrie Cottage, he said. I pictured Joan sleeping in her rank-smelling bedroom. I hoped the windows were open to the healing breeze. She was supposed to come with us on the trek but she’d changed her mind that morning. We pretended not to notice the smudges of mascara around her bloodshot eyes, the stale smell of alcohol on her breath. Karin behaved as she always did on such occasions, scornful and untouchable.

We stopped to picnic by a river. After we had eaten Max rested his back against the trunk of a tree. Karin, her eyes closed, lay with her head resting on his thigh. He told us about the journey he would soon take through the Sahara Desert with a tribe of nomads. He’d ridden camels before but this would be a long journey over mountainous sands where buried cities would one day be excavated. The long grass tickled my cheek as I lay on my side, elbow propping my chin, his melodic voice lulling me into a light doze. A rustle of wings startled me and a bird flew so close I felt the wind in its wings. We watched it dive into the water and reappear. The shimmer of blue feathers, something silvery wriggling in its beak before it flew away.

‘That was a kingfisher.’ Max plucked a feather from the ground and ran his finger along the quivering barbs. He told us a story. A Greek legend about the lovers Alcyone and Ceyx, lost to each other through death. He spoke as he wrote, a mesmeric spinning of words into pictures that transformed the strippled rush of the river into a surging ocean and the twitter of birds into Alcyone’s keening grief as she sought to be reunited with her drowned husband. I imagined the waves closing over her head, her body riding on the crest of a wave before it dragged her down into the dark nothingness. The gods, taking pity on the doomed lovers, transformed them into kingfishers. I saw them rise and reel above the waves. Their blue wings whirred as the thunderous waters fell calm and lapped tranquilly to shore so that Alcyone could lay her eggs on the sands. Those were the halcyon days, Max said. The calm before the storm.

‘We’ve had our halcyon day,’ he said when the story ended. ‘It’s time we were heading back to the cottage.’

Karin stood and stretched lazily, her hands raised in a salute to the sun. I knelt on the grass and gathered the wrappings from the picnic.

Max slipped the blue feather into my hair. ‘Alcyone,’ he whispered or, perhaps it was just his breath escaping fast as he rose to his feet.

Karin lowered her arms and stared into the river.

‘Come on, lazybones,’ he said to her. ‘Time to move.’

‘I don’t want to go back,’ she said.