‘Hi Tiffany, I’m ho-oome!’
Trying not to giggle, Marina trilled out the greeting as she unlocked the door to the cottage. Tiff would be bound to walk out of the sitting room, ready with a ‘Don’t you dare use that name!’ remark.
Still buoyed by the happiness of her break with Lachlan, Marina left her case by the bottom of the stairs. Maybe Tiff was in the garden. Or upstairs with Dirk.
‘Hellooooo!’ she shouted again, ready to make a rapid escape to the garden herself if the pair of them really were in bed. She doubted it – their liaisons were almost exclusively kept to Dirk’s place – but Tiff might have invited him for an away match while Marina had been in Scilly. She was home slightly earlier than planned, having been put on the flight immediately before the scheduled one.
Thuds on the stairs almost confirmed her worst fears, but it was only Tiff with her hair in a towel and green gloop on her face.
‘I’d kiss you but I don’t want you getting avocado facemask all over you. You look fantastic. How was it – or need I ask?’
‘Well, it was … wonderful, actually.’ Marina burst into a grin. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh, it’s been … interesting. Let me wash this off and we can tell each other everything.’
Marina wasn’t sure she wanted to tell Tiff everything, and she was certain that Tiff was holding back some of the events that had passed between her and Dirk. Still, she felt buoyed by happiness and Tiff seemed to have made things up with Dirk for now. She couldn’t ask for more.
She felt sure her life was on an upward curve. Lachlan was good for her, and she hoped she was good for him. Their blossoming relationship would make it easier to go through with the legal necessities around ending her marriage to Nate and, finally, closing the door on a dark time of her life, forever.
Over the next few weeks, Lachlan was as good as his word, joining her for his first official shift at the lookout station and signing up for the training course. In the meantime, Marina and some of the other Wave Watchers helped to supervise him, although with his military background and training, he was already very familiar with search and rescue routines, radio operation and procedures.
Marina felt he’d taken a giant leap forward in being able to return to this kind of environment. She really did think she’d helped him and was quietly pleased she’d persisted in trying to bring him into the community, and that she’d found the courage to reach out to him personally.
He spent many nights at the cottage, which suited Tiff too, because she spent as many at Dirk’s – though when they were both there, Marina was pleased to see they got on well.
‘Hi there.’ Lachlan leaned down to kiss her one evening when he came round for dinner. ‘Busy?’ Marina had been busy all afternoon, emailing her solicitor and preparing a lecture for the coming term, but while dinner was cooking, she’d broken off for a much happier duty – writing a Facebook review of the lighthouse cottages.
‘I was … but I’m now writing a post about how fantastic our stay was on St Agnes. Do you want to see it while I finish dinner?’
‘Do you really want me to see what you’ve written about our weekend?’ He raised an eyebrow and she was reminded of their days – and nights in bed – on the island.
‘I haven’t gone into too much detail!’ She laughed. ‘Here, you can see for yourself while I serve up the pasta.’
Leaving him with the iPad, she drained the linguine and added it to the white wine and garlic sauce, before tipping two portions into chunky bowls. Just in time, she rescued the garlic bread from the oven and put it into a basket.
When she returned, he was sitting at the dining table staring at the iPad. His expression wasn’t what she expected: slightly stunned rather than pleased or amused.
‘Everything OK?’ she said, putting a bowl in front of him. ‘I haven’t revealed anything I shouldn’t have?’
He closed the case on the iPad and pushed it away, the smile back on his face. ‘It’s great. Love the bit about the “exciting activities” on offer, though I don’t think that what we did was quite what the guide book had in mind.’
‘No … it was much more fun, though.’
He smiled again and inhaled the steam from the bowl. ‘This smells good.’
‘Hope so, I got the mussels and prawns from the harbour fishmonger this morning.’
He poured some chilled wine left over from the sauce into her glass and topped up his own. Marina chattered away about more memories of their trip, hoping they could visit again. Lachlan hmmed in the right places and smiled but, from time to time, he seemed not to have heard what she’d said.
At one point, he paused, with a hank of linguine around his fork.
‘Is dinner OK?’ she asked, half amused, half wondering what planet he was on.
‘Oh, aye. It’s great.’ He popped the pasta into his mouth.
After dinner, they took the rest of the bottle out onto the terrace and sat quietly in the evening sun.
‘I went to see the solicitor earlier,’ Marina said, feeling that they’d relaxed.
She’d got his attention again finally. ‘Oh aye?’
‘Mmm. I should have the legal declaration in a couple of weeks.’ An unexpected lump rose to her throat.
Lachlan squeezed her hand. ‘So soon?’ he said.
‘Well, it has been a long time coming …’
‘Aye. It must feel like a lifetime and yet now, so … strange.’
‘It is. Every time I visit the lawyer or sign something, I tell myself it’s a positive step but it still feels like …’ She was about to say a betrayal of Nate, but stopped just in time. ‘A weird thing to do.’ She kissed him quickly and got up. ‘I’ll get us a coffee. I need perking up.’
When she returned with the coffees, Lachlan was speaking to someone on his phone but he ended the call. ‘Aaron,’ he said, and smiled broadly, accepting the mug.
They sat down and she thought he looked tired, with dark smudges under his eyes. Well, they had been burning the midnight oil, she supposed, with a thrill of delight. Maybe it also had something to do with the extra work he was putting in in Aaron’s business, and the Wave Watchers shifts.
‘Are you still OK with the coastguard coming to assess you on Saturday?’ she asked. ‘It’s a bit of a pain but you can move on to the next stage of the training when she’s given you the certificate.’
‘If she gives me the certificate,’ he quipped.
‘Of course she will.’
His smile faded quickly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to assessments. Or rather I was. It’s been a while.’
‘You’ll smash it,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t lose any more sleep over the test. He’d already made giant strides from the day she met him, when he could hardly bear to talk to her. It would be a huge pity if he went back into his shell again, for him and for her.
Shaking her head, the coastguard assessor glanced at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I can’t hang on much longer, Marina. I’ve another assessment to do in St Ives, so if Mr McKinnon doesn’t arrive in the next five minutes, I’ll have to cancel.’
Marina tried not to panic. She’d been at the station for over an hour already, and had agreed to meet Lachlan for his assessment. She’d spoken to him only the afternoon before, when he’d been about to head off to Plymouth for a meeting. He’d warned her he’d be late back that evening, but never mentioned anything that might make him miss the test.
‘I’m sure he’ll be here any second,’ she said, though she was clutching at straws by now. ‘I’ll try to get hold of him again.’ She called his mobile but, once again, it went straight to his answerphone. A text and WhatsApp had also failed to get a response. What if something had happened to him? An accident? Or perhaps he’d had a last minute panic attack at the idea of being tested, and couldn’t face telling her.
‘I’m sorry but I can’t reach him. It’s not like him to miss something this important,’ she said.
The assessor’s lips twisted. ‘Well, we’ll have to rearrange it for another time. I do have to go, Marina,’ she added in a softer tone.
‘It’s OK. I understand, and I can only apologise for wasting your time.’
‘Let me know when he’s ready. We’ll work something out.’
With a sinking heart, Marina saw the assessor out and sat down in the control room, feeling completely deflated. It was hard not to feel let down by Lachlan, but anxiety over where he was and what he might be going through eclipsed her disappointment.
She thought about calling Aaron and asking him if he knew anything, but she didn’t want Lachlan to think she’d been checking up on him and, if he had got cold feet, he might be embarrassed by other people knowing.
She picked up the binoculars and tried to focus on her job but she felt she was scanning the sea for Lachlan and wondering where he was … It must be something serious; he’d known the assessment was today, so it couldn’t be a misunderstanding. Her stomach clenched hard. What if he never answered her calls? What if she never saw him again?
The terrible feeling of helplessness and loss that had overwhelmed her all those years ago flooded back. She scrabbled for perspective, but the fear of losing Lachlan the way she’d lost Nate overwhelmed her. She dropped the binoculars on the counter and covered her face in her hands in despair.
‘Marina?’
Lachlan stood in the doorway to the control room.
Marina let out all her fears and anger. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ she cried. ‘I had the assessor here for ages. They had to go and I had no idea what had happened to you! Why didn’t you reply to my messages? Answer my calls! If you’d bottled it, all you had to do was tell me.’
He took the onslaught without a word and it was then she saw his face: drawn, the eyes dark with lack of sleep.
‘Lachlan? What’s wrong?’
He didn’t answer, but she saw him swallow hard. His lack of reply had done nothing to allay her fears. In fact, she felt even more anxious.
‘Will you sit down, please?’ he said, so softly she could barely hear.
Her body turned cold with dread. ‘Sit down? Why? What’s the matter?’
‘This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do and there’s no easy way of saying it that will ease the shock. It’s not about me, it’s Nate. He’s alive.’