To say that Emily was surprised at Eban’s unexpected request that the two should journey together to Portstewart and Portrush was an understatement.
The urgency and enthusiasm that he’d shown for the trip away was unlike anything else she’d ever witnessed in all the time she’d known him.
It completely countered her initial reservations concerning taking time off work at such short notice, but did not undermine entirely the feeling that – despite occasional couplings – they had been growing apart from one another to the point of becoming little more than casual acquaintances.
‘Fuck buddies’ was apparently the term younger people used.
She didn’t like it, or the validation of the principle in general.
To this end she insisted that she would feel better if the B&B they stayed in together provided single beds.
Eban appeared taken aback by this, even a little hurt, but he assured her that separate sleeping arrangements would be the understanding if she so wished.
Rosemary Payne seemed disgruntled when she heard the news, believing any rapprochement between her two fellow housemates represented a dire backward step for Emily and an opportunistic snatch at carnal satisfaction for Eban Barnard.
Pascal Loncle wished them bon voyage in what seemed a genuine enough felicitude, but was particularly exercised in securing assurances from both – on more than one occasion – that they would be back by Sunday evening, when he expected them in attendance at a significant ‘bash’ to be thrown in his room.
Intrigued, as they had never been deemed suitable guest material before, they assured him that they would both be in attendance.
On Eban’s request, Emily hired a small Nissan Micra car for the trip.
Determined not to be taken advantage of in any sense, she made a point of telling Eban how much his side of the tab came to. To her surprise he produced the cash immediately and paid her for the full amount despite her protestations.
“My idea, my trip, my treat,” was his response.
*
On their short passage to the coast she listened while he talked about how much he loved that part of the world and how we all should do more with our time when we had the chance.
She ascertained that there was clearly something preoccupying him, for despite an outward air of breezy good humour, he had used the terms, ‘The clock is ticking’, ‘It’s later than you think’ and ‘You only live once’ a number of times.
The coastal town of Portstewart had grown exponentially since Eban had first visited as a boy.
The result of the University of Ulster locating in nearby Coleraine and the upsurge in avaricious property developers overreaching themselves with holiday home provision.
Out of season the town maintained a busy enough frisson, thanks in large amount to the off-campus student body and faculty members who had located there.
At this time of year, the sea thundering in from the North Atlantic could be breathtakingly awe-inspiring and sat in dramatic juxtaposition to the quaint, well-tended shop fronts and civic gardens.
Almost annually there were drownings.
Reports of drunken students – habitually male – exiting from a session at the Sea Splash Hotel (aptly named) and venturing out onto the rocks for a better view of the colossal waves which hammered down, throwing spray and suds out over the roads and footpaths.
The currents and tows were pitiless.
When a body was eventually recovered, it invariably was weeks – sometimes months – later, and likely it washed up bloated in Donegal Bay or some other coastal inlet miles away in the Republic.
The holiday town of Portrush was some three miles further on down a windy, twisting stretch of coast road used for the yearly Motorcycle 200 races.
Established for many years as a popular destination for ‘townies’ from Belfast to vacation, Portrush maintained something of the ‘kiss-me-quick’, ‘dodgems and big dipper’ ambiance that had made it so popular in its heyday.
But out of season, the town felt old and tired.
Sea salt eroded metal fairground attractions and scarred and pockmarked the garish signs offering fish and chips and free shots with every pint.
Wind and rain whipped through the empty rides, rattling chains and clanking metal seats against their housings.
The drive into the town was flanked on both sides by some of the most impressive golfing real estate in the country.
Emily was taking the demanding hairpin corners carefully.
She was a conscientious driver and studiously observed the obligatory ‘hands at ten and two o’clock’ and ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ protocols.
It was when pulling out to overtake a learner driver that she noticed again the silver BMW 6 Series in her rear view mirror.
She remembered the same or a similar car pulling out behind them when they had first left Belfast. She vaguely noted that the front-seat passenger wore a bright red sweatshirt, as it had caught her eye.
Now here was the same make of vehicle and the same brightly-clad front-seat passenger a little distance behind them on the North Antrim coast.
Emily never gave this a second thought.
It was perfectly feasible that there were a half-dozen or more cars with red-shirted passengers on the roads that day. Even within the realms of coincidence that these travellers had left from their very own street on exactly the same journey as themselves.
She had no inclination to mention this to Eban, who was going on somewhat in an entirely atypical manner about not leaving goals, dreams or ambitions unfulfilled.
Most unlike him, she thought.
Besides, he would only chide her that she was paranoid and that living in Belfast for too long can do that to you.
Eban directed her to the White Rocks Beach, a long, pristine stretch of sandy strand.
The wind was whipping in at a pace and although the sky looked ominous, the rain had all but ceased. It was virtually deserted now but for a few hardy surfers in wetsuits and a pensioner throwing a tennis ball for his dog.
They had come prepared, each donning a heavy outdoor coat, scarf and hat.
“Do you remember the last time we were here?” he asked. He moved to link her arm and pull her closer but she lightly resisted this and walked a few paces in front of him.
She said something he couldn’t hear, the wind taking her words and carrying them by him.
“What?” he yelled.
She turned around to face him. “That was then…” she yelled above the breakers.
And this is now, he finished the sentence in his mind.
Something had changed about Emily, he thought.
This wasn’t about playing hard to get.
She was being standoffish.
But more than that.
She was resolved, he considered.
She had crossed some rubicon or other and she did not intend to come back from it again.
*
Although both carried on walking in silence, their thoughts did indeed return to the first time they had visited here together.
It was in summer, in the early weeks of what passed for a courtship between them.
Eban was enjoying his role as unofficial tour guide, showing this English girl the sights. Choosing only those that held an emotional resonance for him personally, and sharing these with her in a more intimate fashion than both were perhaps aware of.
Bonding in a way that he was not prepared to admit to himself.
They had just slept with each other for the first time the night before, and whilst rendered a little awkward through a lack of adequate foreplay, it had undoubtedly brought them closer together.
Caught up in what might have been the first flowerings of a relationship, Eban went a little over the top that day.
She had lost a leather pump shoe in the sand and retrieving it, he pretended to throw it into the waves, dropping it deliberately at the arc of his swing.
Then in a completely unexpected action, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the surf, wading in fully clothed, up to his knees.
She screamed with laughter and mock alarm as he threatened to put her down in the surf, but carried her back to safety on the sand.
They had kissed then and there, his hands buried in her streaming hair, holding each other close and tight as two young boys passed by eating ice cream cones and giggling.
If there had ever definitively been a moment when Emily felt that she might be falling in love with Eban Barnard, then that was it.
But today they walked in silence and apart from each other.
He throwing small stones into the breakers, she occasionally pocketing a colourful shell here and there.
Both quietly reflecting on the mixed messages that day in summer had given them.
They had clung together so fiercely, kissed so passionately because of their fear, their loneliness, their longing, their disappointment.
Here today, it was achingly, irrefutably clear that neither had been able to stop the other’s suffering.
Eventually it began to rain.
“Are you ready to go back?” she asked. As if impartially, coldly inquiring as to whether he had satisfied whatever notion had brought the two of them out here in the first place.
He knew the moment had come when he would have to find the courage to love her. If it was not already too late to do so.
Both his mother and father had been sentimentalists and throughout his youth he had unconsciously modelled himself emotionally on them.
His father with tears in his eyes, singing to his mother some Jim Reeves or Slim Whitman song – “If I had my life to live over… I would still fall in love with you…”
His mother, outwardly less demonstrative, but a devotee of romantic novels and enamoured of Christmases, family and self-sacrificing dignity in the face of tragedy.
It never seemed that it took much to get them going and as he grew older, Eban began to harbour suspicions that this easy emotionalism was being deliberately cultivated as a controlling mechanism. Something resembling a passive-aggressive manipulation of his own feelings.
Histrionics and operatic levels of worry and grief were not uncommon, but all provoked by selfless love and concern of course.
This rendered him suspicious of the maudlin, but left him open both to emotional manipulation by others and capable of it himself.
Therefore, as he looked at Emily now, solitary and vulnerable, her hair being whipped around her face by the wind; the waves crashing on the beach behind her and then being pulled back out to sea, he could not answer her.
Could not tell her he was ready to go back.
Rather, he just turned around in the direction of the car and began walking.
*
They drove back in silence to their Bed and Breakfast accommodation in Portstewart.
On reaching the edges of town, Emily – distracted somewhat by the growing distance between them and the prospect of the coming evening – took a wrong turn at one of the many roundabouts on the outskirts.
This led her to exit prematurely and drive the wrong way up a one-way street and into oncoming traffic. With horns blaring and headlights flashing all around her, Emily panicked. She slammed the brakes on hard, almost catapulting Eban through the windscreen. He was jerked back violently by his seat belt.
She threw the car into reverse gear and quickly checked that the path was clear in her rear-view mirror.
She was surprised to see the same silver BMW reversing away from them at speed.
She could clearly make out the driver, front and back-seat passengers looking over their shoulders and behind them as their car hurtled backward and away from Emily.
This time there could be no mistake.
The man in the front wore the red hooded sweatshirt she had noticed both times before.
They must have been following Emily and Eban closely to have made the same mistake and travelled some distance along this one-way system.
A lapse in concentration on their part, perhaps, but their cover was blown.
When she had righted the vehicle Emily pulled over to the side of the road.
She was shaking and close to tears. Irate drivers slowed down to glare in and to shake fists as they pulled level.
“Are you okay?” asked Eban, rubbing at his collarbone where the belt had bitten.
“Yes… yes… I’m alright. Eban, listen – this is going to sound crazy, but…”
Emily explained all about their perceived trackers, about the man in the red top and about the unlikely coincidence of it all. She was half-surprised when Eban did not routinely dismiss all this out of hand as nonsense.
“It’s been a strange week for me.” he said. “I have some information that some people may want kept quiet.”
Emily looked at him as if he was joking. When she could tell that he was not, she was deeply perturbed.
“What? What are you talking about?”
When he looked away out of the car window and remained silent, she pleaded with him.
“Eban, you’re scaring me.”
It was getting dark now.
On the remaining drive back to Portstewart her mind was in turmoil.
Who was this man beside her?
What did she really know about him after all?
What might he be involved in?
Perhaps Rosemary Payne had been correct all along.
For a man of his age, he seemed to be without ties, family, friends… it just didn’t seem right.
They pulled into a small public parking facility some yards away from their accommodation and unloaded their overnight bags from the boot.
Walking toward the guest house, Emily suddenly grabbed his arm.
She whispered out of the side of her mouth. “Don’t turn around… there it is again!”
The silver BMW car sat parked in shadow at the side of the road, some short distance from where they had alighted.
“Keep walking and let’s get checked in,” said Eban and steered her onto the footpath and toward the guest house.
They walked up the path and rang the bell.
An elderly woman shuffled toward them, smiling. She opened the inner double-glazed doors and motioned them to come in.
Both did so, but all at once Eban turned on his heel and walked back down the path to the street. Emily turned around, puzzled, and stood in the doorway.
He looked back down toward where they had parked their car and saw two men walk around it, shining a pocket torch through the windows and crouching low to peer inside.
“Stay there!” he ordered Emily and made his way toward them, walking purposefully and at pace down the centre of the road.
On seeing this, both men quickly ran to their car and jumped inside.
The powerful engine roared into life.
The headlamps flashed onto full beam.
The car pulled out violently and screeched at speed toward Eban.
He stood stock still in the middle of the road with his arm extended and hand raised like some mythic custodian.
Blinded by the lights, awaiting the impact.
Welcoming it.
The car shrieked to a halt three feet in front of him.
Eban was shaking violently.
He walked around the side and leaned lower.
The electric window on the driver’s side droned down.
“Can I help you, officers?” said Eban as calmly and as acidly as he could muster.
“Don’t know what you mean, mate,” said the driver. He had an English accent.
The other man in the front seat laughed a little to himself and looked straight ahead.
“Don’t they teach you anything about surveillance, you wankers? Tell your friend there if he wants to stalk somebody then better not to do it in a bright red jumper!”
“Don’t know what you mean, mate,” said the driver again.
“Look, if you want me to come back to the station then just ask, okay… there’s no need for all of this…”
The big man who had been taking up most of the back seat leaned forward into the semi-light. He was well dressed in a sports jacket, shirt and tie.
Eban could see the moles and warts on his face.
His bulbous nose, red with broken vessels.
His hair thinning and combed over.
His scalp flaking.
“You’re the boy who can’t keep his trap shut.”
“And you are…?”
“You’ll know soon enough, Barnard… you’ll know soon enough,” was all he said.
He sank back into the shadows again. “Go!” he barked.
The car took off at high speed.
It swept by Emily, who had followed him and now stood some steps behind.
She had heard it all.
The veiled threat. The implied menace.
She had seen that ogre of a man.
He had looked straight into her eyes as the car passed by.
*
Later, she refused to get undressed.
He had kept his word and reserved single beds.
But she refused to go to bed.
She sat up all night long.
Wrapped in a shawl and drinking tea made with the small kettle in the room.
Wondering if they would come back in the night?
If they were at 15 Donnybrook Avenue right now?
Going through Eban’s belongings?
Through her own?
Her eyes closing. Jerking awake when a car door slammed outside, or another guest walked down the corridor.
Eban offered nothing by way of explanation.
Nothing that might help her understand, or allay her fears.
Instead he just complained vaguely of some pains, gulped down some pills from an unfamiliar prescription bottle, turned to the wall and went to sleep.
If she had previously been in any doubt, then all that had now changed.
Her flight to Heathrow was already booked.
She would be attending for interview at Dudley Primary School at 4pm on Monday afternoon.