Christmas on the Island Read online

  For some reason, Lorna didn’t immediately turn the lights back on. Instead, she felt a twist of excitement in her stomach and took a step into the room, not quite able to help herself.

  ‘Hello?’ she said as if she didn’t know who was in there.

  As if she wasn’t aware, every waking moment, of exactly where he was. As if she didn’t know when surgery hours were, or the exact moment his shaggy dark head would appear over the crest of a hill with the little ones of a morning.

  She took a deep breath and stepped in the room. She owed him an apology. It had been insensitive and inconsiderate. She had thought the boys would like it, but instead she could tell he found in inappropriate. Upsetting him had been the last thing on her mind. If anything, she had hoped he might be so thrilled with how the boys performed, how central to the school and the performance they had been . . . that he might . . . that he might have been pleased with her. She winced at her own naïveté.

  ‘Saif,’ she said. ‘I am so sorry. I thought the boys would enjoy being in the play.’

  He turned around.

  ‘What . . . what did you think? That they would be good brown little boys? Is that what you thought? We will look the part and be good little Christian boys because you are in charge of what my boys think now! And you are in charge of what they believe! Is that your way? Is that what you want?’

  Lorna took a step back, upset, but having known on one level that this was coming.

  And she sensed somewhere deep within her that this rage was not just about the boys. But she also had the awful, self-betraying flutter of happiness about having his attention on her, even if it was rage. Well. Hate was an emotion, wasn’t it? The only thing she feared from Saif was total and utter indifference.

  She looked up at him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I got it wrong. Totally wrong. I should have spoken to you about it.’

  ‘You should have. You should have.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lorna. ‘I . . . I wanted to. I couldn’t.’

  He stared at her furiously.

  ‘And why not?’

  And they both knew, right then, that they had gone too far. Saif stepped back and let out a huge, long sigh.

  He stood, stock-still in the moonlight. Lorna still hadn’t turned on the light, though at this point couldn’t have said why not.

  Saif stepped further back and tried to change the subject.

  ‘Ash,’ he said at last, trying to tone matters down a bit. ‘Ash, I think he was very happy.’

  Lorna blinked.

  ‘I think he was too,’ she said.

  ‘He is so happy here,’ said Saif. ‘I worry . . . I worry that he forgets that this is not his real life.’

  There was a long silence. Finally:

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Lorna very softly. ‘Are you sure this isn’t your real life?

  * * *

  It was, in their defence, a very beautiful night: thick snow on the old school roof; clear, clear stars in the freezing air. If you were to ask me, I would blame the fact that it was getting so close to the longest night of the year. The deepest moment; the ancient turning of the old year into the new; the very changing instant.

  On Mure, midwinter had been celebrated long, long before the Christians had arrived in the northern lands; way back as long as there had even been people, they had marked with standing stones the position of the heavens, and the changing of the seasons, and the very centre of the dark.

  Midwinter is a far deeper, wilder magic than Christmas. It began before religious divisions and is older than religion itself, beyond nativities or other portrayals. Midwinter is a human concern rooted in the earth and the body, not the heavens and the soul.

  Lorna took another step forward then, into the dark. Saif stayed where he was, beside the chairs.

  He did not head towards the light switch, or make a joke, or do anything someone might do under normal circumstances. Because, in an instant, these were not normal circumstances. A moonbeam illuminated his dark shining hair. His trembling hands.

  Saif stood still. It was the moonlight, Lorna told herself, feeling the breath quicken in her throat. Somehow that makes it okay. In the moonlight nothing else matters.

  She opened her mouth to say something more, then decided not to. Because suddenly there was a spell in here and she didn’t want to break it and she didn’t want it to go away and . . .

  All at once, Lorna found herself compelled to move, because if she waited, she realised she would think again, would change her mind, would never, ever know.

  And from nowhere and with no expectations, on a day that had started like any other – namely in Lorna’s case, with a deep low ache of a passion for someone she never felt she could possess – suddenly, out of the blue she found she was running full pelt across the wooden gymnasium floor and into his arms – and he was there, equally to meet her, seizing her fiercely, his arms on her arms, his strong fingers grasping her and then, roughly, his mouth was on her mouth and he was kissing her at last with the pent-up passion of what felt like eternity; and she kissed him back, completely unconscious that there were tears running down her cheeks, because the space between them was finally filled. And now he was trailing his hands up her face and through her hair as he kissed her, and then he was cupping her face and tracing his fingers over her forehead as if she was the most perfect thing he had ever known and a huge wave broke over her, and she was at once absolutely and completely desperate for him, pressing herself against him shamelessly, completely unhinged as she immediately started pulling on the buttons of his shirt, desperate to feel his chest pressed against hers.

  The ludicrousness of their surroundings, the utter inappropriateness of the situation – it didn’t stop them. Nothing could.

  Except for a pile of gym mats.

  They crashed over the pile onto the floor and Lorna gave a shocked cry of surprised laughter, which cut off when she realised how quickly Saif had stopped laughing, and now how seriously he was gazing at her from his knees, as if he had barely noticed them fall. She could live in those dark eyes for ever, she thought. And she stood up, and he didn’t take his hungry eyes off her; she grabbed his hand and helped him up.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said urgently, her voice low.

  Outside the night was so clear, so quiet. Freezing, or a degree or two under. There was nobody around. Lorna locked up as quickly as she could – her hands fumbling the locks over and over again – conscious that time was important, that if she stopped for too long one or other of them would come to their senses; Saif would feel too guilty or something would go terribly wrong.

  She practically pulled him into her little red car. It wasn’t far to walk but she normally had piles of marking and materials that were heavy to carry, and the track was often muddy. There was nobody about, and although it was only just after four in the afternoon it was, of course, as black as midnight.

  Neither of them said anything, their breath like smoke in the frosted atmosphere. Lorna was breathing quickly. She turned on the ignition and immediately the radio started up. BBC nan Gàidheal was playing, of all things, ‘Oganaich Uir a Rinn M’Fhagail’, a lament for a lost lover which also happened to be one of the most erotic pieces of music in all of the Celtic canon.

  Saif wouldn’t understand the words, she thought, glancing at him, that beautiful strong profile – but nobody could possibly ignore the significance of the rising, imploring melody; the driving strings and yearning, pulsing beat: it was universal. She put her hand up to still the music, but his hand was already there and took hers away and so they let the music play. In the dim light of the car, he gently caressed her face as she leaned into his large, strong hand with its long fingers; then, as the car started to move, and she tried desperately to focus on the road, he lightly brushed his hand down until it was just skimming the curve of her breasts through her dress and she found herself trembling even harder, her pulse thudding through her, and she grabbed his hand, which w
as freezing, and placed it right on her breast, which was not, and they both gasped.

  ‘I’m going to crash the car,’ she murmured.

  ‘I fix you,’ he said, and she looked at him and saw the glint in his eye – the wicked, laughing, teasing side to this very serious man that so few people saw – and just as she had thought she couldn’t possibly want him any more, she absolutely did, and she found herself – entirely out of character for her – grabbing his hand once more and practically throwing it down where it was even warmer, where her skirts met the top of her thighs, and when he wasted no time, and gently but firmly took hold of her there, she closed her eyes and very nearly did crash the car.

  They fell, tangled up, upstairs into the little apartment. It was so cosy and warm: the fairy lights were lit, the fire damped down even as Lorna stoked it back up and the curtains were drawn, Milou snoozing. Lorna’s perfume was on the air, maddening Saif beyond endurance, and although the rational part of Lorna’s brain said she should wait, slow down, she couldn’t, not at all. To hell with it.

  She couldn’t wait and she couldn’t stop – not when he was finally here, in her house, in the empty bed that she had dreamed he was in for so long – and she could finally do what she had wanted to do pretty much since he’d stepped off the boat, downtrodden, in desperate need of a haircut, his eyes the saddest thing she’d ever seen. She needed to pull off the doctor’s tie, undo the buttons of his fresh white shirt to reveal the golden chest covered in dark hair that she’d dreamed of so often. He, in his turn, kissed her deeply, buried his head in her neck, coiled his hands deeply into her thick red hair and, almost without realising how it had happened, they had both staggered into her bedroom and onto her bed.

  She expected things to continue to happen very quickly then, their tumult was so great. Though she had managed to scramble to the bathroom to find her diaphragm, everything was a blur and her heart was racing. But when she was back in the room, when she was finally lying beneath him completely naked, everything changed.

  He propped himself on his elbow, his shadow over her, utterly in control. The only sound in the room was their heavy breathing and the crackling of logs in the fireplace next door. Then he took his left hand, and began to trace it, painfully slowly, down her pale body, tracing its curves, both of them fixated on where his hand was going. He caught her hand in his, their fingers interlocked, and drew both down together all over her as she gasped and felt goosebumps rise up on her skin.

  Lorna desperately wanted things to happen faster, but with a faint smile at the corner of his lips, Saif shook his head a little and continued with exactly what he was doing, tracing his hand along everywhere it wanted to go – sometimes with more force, sometimes with less, now with his mouth – until he had the entirely pleasurable experience of seeing Lorna squirming, helpless beneath him, unable to focus, caught up in an agony of pleasure withheld. Lorna herself was in awe of this power he seemed to hold so lightly, and he continued, precise and unhurried, even as his own breathing grew thicker and more ragged, even as she was gasping and starting to make high-pitched noises that threatened to turn into screams, never stopping the maddening stroking.

  Lorna arched her back towards him, and he, still slowly, moved until he was lying on top of her, his hands gently taking her wrists and moving them above her head; his mouth and beard were on her neck, moving lower; his chest was pressing against hers; and by the time he finally lifted himself to enter her, she was already so unbelievably wound up that the second she felt him push in between her damp thighs, she found herself already on the brink of coming – and then, as she felt him thrust inside for the first time, she did so, incredibly quickly and crashingly hard, shouting out loud – it was like nothing she’d ever felt before, not with anyone, certainly not the first time . . . and she collapsed back onto the bed, overwhelmed and tearful as he burst out laughing in joyful amazement. But he had only just begun, and was in no mood for stopping. He scooped her up again, whispering all the time in her ear – endearments and encouragement in his native language, and her name, over and over again.

  She was now roughly upright around him, sitting up, her knees locked behind his back, so he felt fully in her a different way and he held her so close that as they moved together she found herself building once again, and now – this was unprecedented – she felt herself, more and more, bright red and groaning, sore and ecstatic at the same time, her body quivering, sweating hard, as he heaved her fiercely up and down. Saif felt himself desperately inside her skin, driven mad by the vivid, bright red shock of her, her sharp fingernails pressed into his strong back, and he roared suddenly and pulled her incredibly tightly towards him, plunged her down, and she squeezed her eyes tight and came again, rode it out with him, yelping and whimpering; and by the time she came back to herself, the bed was a tumbled mass, her breath was a ragged sob and they found themselves staring at each other as if neither could believe the other was real, and the world glowed rose and gold.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Neither could believe it was only 6 p.m. Never in her life had Lorna wanted more never to move again; to stay, cocooned, safe in Saif’s strong arms. Neither of them could speak: it felt so huge, like more than the world could bear.

  She wanted all of it, everything to disappear. She wanted to stay under the covers, in her snug sanctuary, building a little world with him – a den that would belong to them and nobody else for ever – to stay there until the end of time; to kiss him until she had had enough though it was the one thing she knew absolutely that she would never ever have enough of and, she could tell, under the covers, that he hadn’t either. She turned to him as she felt him stiffening again, his eyes burning into her, and moved to kiss him, feeling the delicious pain of her tender lips over his bristles . . .

  But the outside world wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘I have to go,’ he said, his voice full of regret. ‘The boys . . . Oh, my darling . . .’

  He kissed her again and she pressed herself against him, knowing in her heart that she too would be missed any moment now; that everything could fall apart – would fall apart – as what they were doing was inappropriate at best.

  Oh, she could not bear it! She could not tear herself away from the sweetest thing she had ever known.

  They clung to each other wordlessly, and just as things started to get completely and utterly out of control again, Saif’s phone in the next room started to buzz quite insistently, and he had to jump out of bed and it felt like she was being ripped apart.

  A word from either of them, she knew, would break it. It would break the spell. The question, as she sat up, that she couldn’t ask: would he? Would they . . . ?

  He leaned, so tall in the doorframe, staring at her, his eyes full of emotion as she gazed back at him. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in his life, standing there, clutching his phone.

  She tilted her head to the side, shooed him away. He moved forward, kissed her deeply, then turned away and pulled on his shirt. Watching him dress was agony. She wanted to tug on his sleeve, pull the shirt back off those arms, reverse time, put him back in her embrace, never move . . .

  ‘I have—’

  ‘Sssh,’ she said. She was in a dream, she decided. A magical, wonderful dream, and their words were going to break it, one way or another, and so he kissed her once more and then he left, and she wept with the glory of it all, and the fear of what would come.

  * * *

  The party of course was buzzing, in full swing when she turned up. Every family in the village was there as well as many of the childless farmers whom Flora always invited along because they didn’t deserve to miss out on the fun. It wasn’t their fault so many of the women of the island moved to the mainland so they wouldn’t have to be a farmer’s wife. Nobody pretended life on Mure was easy.

  But on nights like tonight – the frost burled hard in the furrows of the earth, the stars glittering bright above and the farmhouse a glowing have
n of golden warmth, food, music and fraternal feeling, and Christmas coming, and work stopped for a little while – well . . . Then you might indeed feel as Flora did when she was looking hopefully around for Joel. Of course he was not here tonight. She hadn’t heard from him since the flowers. He must be sitting at the Rock, on his own, brooding, which only made her more furious.

  Saif was full of apologies for being called out, leaving the children in her care, but she waved it away. The island’s children were everyone’s children after all; it was never a case of favours done and owed, never. It was odd of him even to apologise.

  Then she saw, ten minutes later, a rather quiet, rattled-looking, frightfully pink Lorna slip in. And before she even checked Saif’s face – who took a terrified glance sideways and didn’t even turn around whereas normally, of course, the very least he would do would be to greet the woman who was teaching his children – she knew.

  She kept a social smile on her face as she left Saif and told him to help himself to punch, a concept he found both peculiar and revolting, and sidled up to her friend.

  ‘So where have you been?’ she said, proffering a glance of prosecco with a conspiratorial grin on her face.

  ‘Just tidying up the school,’ babbled Lorna. ‘It was such a mess after the nativity! Streamers everywhere! And so much fake snow! Oh my goodness, it really needed a good going over! Took for ever, you know what it’s . . .’

  Lorna hadn’t even had a shower. The idea of washing him away, the scent of him on her skin – she wouldn’t ever do that. Didn’t ever want to do that.

  ‘Also, did you just shag Saif?’

  ‘WHAT?’

  Flora thought Lorna’s head was going to explode as she grabbed her hand in an incredibly schoolmistressy way and guided her outside into the frosty air. The cold hit them both.

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Oh, just something to which your reaction just confirmed a very mild suspicion I had due to you two being the only people in the village not here until now and arriving late within two minutes of each other and both of you being bright pink and also both of you being in love with each other?’ smiled Flora, for once merry and full of mischief, her own troubles temporarily forgotten. Frankly she was just incredibly relieved that someone else had problems she could fixate on instead of her own. She took Lorna’s arm.