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  “About you. About your life. About what makes you be like this.”

  “Like what? Come on, Flora . . .”

  “No,” said Flora. “Otherwise we’ll start up again and it will be just the same and you won’t let me in, and it’ll end. Badly. And you’ll go off and work for my evil archnemesis so she can sneer at me.”

  “What?” said Joel, puzzled.

  “I’m not kidding,” said Flora. “I want to know. All of it.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” said Joel. “I told you. I was brought up in foster care. Get over it.”

  “You can’t get over it!”

  “I’m fine!”

  “You’re not fine!”

  “This isn’t your business.”

  “It is!”

  “It isn’t! Goddammit, Flora! I just wanted . . . I just wanted to have something pure. Something that isn’t part of that life. My selkie girl.”

  He couldn’t have picked a worse thing to say.

  “That’s not me, Joel! That’s not me, some easygoing water bloody sprite that comes and goes and asks for nothing. For nothing. Because I’m not a real girl; I’m some stupid fantasy you have of an island and a life that just does nothing but sit around and wait for you and takes care of all your needs but doesn’t get anything in return. Because I get nothing from you!”

  He was suddenly furious. “You have all of me. You have everything I have ever had to give.”

  “IT’S NOT ENOUGH!” screamed Flora.

  Suddenly, in his fury Joel threw the chair on the floor. Flora stared at it, then up at him.

  And then he was right in front of her, breathing hard, and she was staring back up at him, her heart pounding furiously, and, even as she cursed herself for her utter stupidity, she couldn’t help herself: she grabbed his face and before she knew it he was kissing her, furiously hard, almost painfully, and she was tearing at him, half from frustration and rage and everything she felt overspilling as if she didn’t know how else to express herself. Every word she had spoken had been pointless. Everything had been a waste. What did she have left, after all? And she grabbed him and pulled him tight toward her and they fumbled their way to the door, both of them aware that Mark might be back at any moment. They opened the door. A cleaner was at the bottom end of the corridor wielding a duster and pushing a trolley full of towels.

  Both still breathing heavily, Joel tucked his shirt back into his trousers, Flora’s hand went to her burning face, and they tried to half walk, half run as normally as possible down the corridor.

  Joel fumbled with the electronic key in the door of the guest cottage, and looked incredibly close to kicking it in before the green light finally showed, and they collapsed through it, without words, letting it slam loudly behind them. Joel immediately turned to Flora and pushed her hard against the wall, as she found herself absolutely frantic: ripping the expensive shirt buttons when she couldn’t unfasten them; tearing at them to get through to the smooth chest; pulling off her own top so he could bury his face in her breasts. All the sadness, all the anger and grief and frustration needed to be swept away, the only way they knew how. He stopped briefly, looked at her with furious lust in his eyes, and dragged her over, throwing her on the high bed. As she pulled back the crisp white sheets, he was already on her, pushing down her jeans, and she responded with equal fervor, grabbing him as if she wanted her body to swallow him up, to rip through her skin, to become a part of her and she didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t recognize the noises they were making; she was screaming at him and he was responding, furiously, tumultuously, as it burned through them like a purifying fire. Flora wasn’t sure if it was love or rage or both, and they shouted, both of them, as he collapsed finally on top of her, a maelstrom of sweat, breathless, with items of clothing they hadn’t managed to remove from the bed all round them. Joel swore, uncharacteristically, and rolled off and lay facing the wall. Flora tried to get her breath back and felt her heart rate slow, very gradually, and stared at the ceiling, trying to come back down to earth—trying not to think, What now . . . ?

  * * *

  Eventually, Flora had to get up and go to the bathroom. Joel still hadn’t moved. She hadn’t touched him or spoken to him; his broad back was motionless beside her on the bed. She moved, slowly, her muscles aching. As she got out of bed, he flinched beside her. She turned her head.

  “Come back to bed.”

  His voice was low, almost imperceptible. The mood had changed completely, like all the fight had gone out of him. Flora blinked. He was still lying facing the wall.

  There was a pause. Outside, somewhere, a lost lamb baaed loudly, repeatedly, looking for its mother.

  Joel still wouldn’t turn around.

  “Well,” he said. She stared at the back of his head.

  He heaved a great sigh. When he spoke, his voice was very low and calm.

  “When I was four years old. My father,” he said finally. “When I was four years old, my father killed my mother. In front of me. He would have killed me too, but my mother . . . My mother screamed and ran to the doorframe and there was a lot of blood and noise everywhere and he tried to run away.”

  Flora was utterly winded.

  She found herself kneeling on the bed, but didn’t want to go any closer.

  “I remember everything. I remember being there very clearly. My father killed my mother. The police took him away. He died in jail. I never saw him again. I didn’t speak at all for two years. The government tried to foster me out but none of the placements ever worked out for me. I did well at school, got a scholarship, and the government paid for me to live there until I got a full scholarship to college. Dr. Philippoussis was the guidance counselor connected to the school.

  “He is,” said Joel very slowly, “the only person who knows.”

  Inside, the snakes were writhing, coiling themselves more tightly around his brain. Sex had stopped them, shut them up for long enough, allowed him to break through and speak out. But now, he could feel them moving again.

  “Did you love your mum?” Flora’s soft voice was like balm.

  “I don’t know,” said Joel, his voice faltering. He had to, he knew. He had to push on through, defeat the things in his head. “I don’t remember. I found out later she and my father . . . They took a lot of drugs. They got in a lot of trouble. She was a dropout.”

  “Their families?”

  “I didn’t ever know my father’s family. I don’t know if he even did. He was just feral, through and through. My mother . . . she was from a wealthy family. Gave up everything for him. They cut her off completely.”

  “But what about you? What about when you were left all alone?”

  “They didn’t want to know. Didn’t care. I was some mistake by the daughter who’d gone bad. She had a lot of siblings, I know. Maybe they were worried about their own kids’ inheritance, that kind of thing. Who knows? I don’t, and I don’t care.”

  “But . . . your grandmother?”

  “That’s right,” said Joel. “I come from a long line of absolute bastards on both sides.”

  The snakes in his head tightened their grip, as Flora shook her head in disbelief, but he was too far in to stop now.

  “That’s . . .”

  “It happens all the time,” said Joel. “Four times a week in your country, did you know? A man kills his partner. Leaving God knows what chaos behind.”

  Flora blinked. “Jesus . . .”

  “So,” said Joel. “Now you know.”

  “Now I know,” said Flora. “And I don’t care a bit.”

  And then she pulled up the bedsheets and she dived right underneath them and crawled over and found him in the dark and held him—pinned herself to him from behind—held him fiercely tightly and neither of them wanted to talk any more, not then, and so Joel turned around and once more took her fiercely on the large bed. They turned off their phones, and made love, and slept, and held each other, and ordered room service and said as little a
s possible, to let the detonation and the dust settle—to see if they could deal with the new reality now that it was out there, now it was a part of their existence, now Joel had brought the wolf through the door, the violence unleashed; the boy become man, and the damage it had wrought.

  Chapter Sixty

  No more secrets,” Flora had whispered lying next to him on the bed, and she had never been so happy in her entire life.

  “You say that while I can’t see your selkie tail.”

  “Stop talking like that,” she said, kissing him in a warning fashion. Then she got up, groaning. “Argh, wedding planning day.”

  “Did you give any thought to the finances?”

  Flora didn’t want to confess that she had found his e-mail almost incomprehensible and grimaced. “One nightmare at a time.”

  “Quite,” said Joel, who was dreading the wedding more than Flora could possibly have imagined.

  * * *

  Flora sat in the Rock with Colton, looking at her ring binder. Fintan and Colton were going big. Really, really big. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she was up to it, not after the Jan controversy, but she was doing her best—the barbecue had been a success after all, although a lot of that had had to do with the farmers’ cask of ale and their incredible luck with the weather.

  Colton was flying in champagne from a small vineyard, which would be completely wasted on the local residents but presumably not on the investors and rich Americans she assumed must be coming. But she’d assumed wrong, it turned out. Apart from a handful of friends from college—both his parents were dead—there was almost nobody coming for Colton at all. He’d shrugged it off cheerfully.

  “Billionaires don’t have friends,” he said. “Or else they have to buy them. And my family are a bunch of tight-ass Republican birther homophobic bastards.”

  “All of them?” said Flora.

  “Every single last one. I just want people I love. Actual people I really love.”

  “And all the drunks from the Harbor’s Rest who’ll want to come,” pointed out Flora.

  “Collateral damage,” said Colton.

  Flora looked at him critically. “Stop losing weight for the wedding. You’re not trying to get into a Kate Middleton dress. Are you? Are you?”

  Colton shook his head. “Nah. It’s just being fed properly by your brother.”

  “Well, that’s odd,” said Flora. “Because every time I eat Fintan’s latest batch of cheese, I put on seven pounds.”

  Colton smiled weakly and changed the subject. “Okay, so, anyway, the cloudbusters.”

  “The what?”

  Colton shrugged. “I know, I know. Sometimes it’s beautiful. But sometimes it isn’t.”

  He gestured outside, where it didn’t look remotely summery. A sideways sweep of rain had appeared from nowhere and the Café by the Sea was pleasantly full of steamed-up tourists in windbreakers sitting out the storm and finishing all the cheese scones and moving on to the potato scones.

  “Yes, and?”

  “Well, I want to have the wedding outside. I want it to be perfect.”

  “You can’t control the weather though.”

  “Ah,” said Colton. He pushed over a brochure to Flora, who took it in amazement.

  “‘Cloudbusting Services,’” Flora read in puzzlement. She looked up. “You’re joking, right?”

  Colton shook his head. “Nope. They seed the clouds with silver and it clears them away.”

  “Where do they go?”

  “I don’t know. Science,” said Colton.

  Flora leafed through. “So they guarantee you a clear day on your wedding?”

  “Yup.”

  “That’s insane!”

  Colton looked serious. “You know, Flora, I’m only planning on doing this once.”

  “You’ll have to,” said Flora. “I don’t care how rich you are: how much is this costing?”

  “Never you mind,” said Colton. “Just remember that I give a lot to charity.”

  “I can Google it, you know.”

  “I give a lot to charity. Right, I have to go. Do you think you know what you’re doing?”

  “Making the most amazing meal anyone’s ever had ever?”

  “Great! Thanks.”

  “I’m Googling cloudbusting, you weirdo.”

  “Can’t wait to welcome you as a sister.”

  “And please,” Flora genuinely was begging. “Please, when are you opening this place up for business?”

  Colton looked shifty. “Ah, don’t you like having it just for us?”

  “Yes,” said Flora. “But I like paying my staff even more.”

  * * *

  “Okay, here’s a thought,” Flora said, testing out yet another wedding cake recipe on everyone as they sat at the kitchen table in the farmhouse. Joel looked up, desperate to get out of unsuccessfully attempting to have a conversation with her father about farming.

  “What if I change everything that needs butter to margarine?”

  Joel winced.

  “Not likely,” said Fintan.

  “Yuck!” said Hamish.

  “Come on, you guys, you’re not helping. Hamish, come work for me for free.”

  “Look,” said Innes. “Running a business is hard. Maybe you’re just not cut out for it.”

  “Shut up, Innes! You’re the one who nearly lost the farm.”

  “Hey, don’t have a go at Innes,” said Fintan. “I was the one who nearly lost the farm. There must be other things you could try.”

  Flora looked at him. “I could marry a billionaire. Where is he, anyway?”

  Fintan shrugged. “He’s up to something secret on the mainland. I hope it’s buying me a really large present.”

  Flora caught Joel looking dismayed at that remark, but thought little of it.

  “Do you need more investment?” said Innes.

  “No,” said Flora. “It’s just pouring money down a black hole. Oh God. The only thing I can do is whack the prices up.”

  “You should do that,” said Joel. “It’s absurdly cheap.”

  “But I don’t want to gouge everybody in the neighborhood!”

  “Can’t you gouge the tourists then?” said Innes, who was cross because someone in a rental car had beeped his tractor as he’d been driving up the hill. “They’re bloody annoying buggers.”

  Flora thought about it. “I suppose . . . What if I had a discount card?”

  “What do you mean?” Joel took off his spectacles.

  “Well . . . We talked about this . . . I can’t charge my locals more.”

  “You could . . .”

  “I shan’t!”

  Joel smiled to himself.

  “But,” said Flora, “what if I bumped up all the prices then gave every single local person a discount card that brought it back down to what it was and only took extra money off the tourists? And Jan . . .”

  The boys stopped what they were doing.

  “Hang on,” said Innes. “Did our Flora just have quite a good idea?”

  Fintan shook his head. “Flora, are you sick?”

  “And every time you’re rude to me,” said Flora, “I’m adding another hundred quid on to your wedding bill.”

  “Shut it!”

  “Two hundred!” She smiled gleefully. “That could work, couldn’t it?”

  “You’d have to explain it four times to Mrs. Blair,” said Innes thoughtfully. “And get the cards printed.”

  “I can do that. Agot, draw me a card.”

  “I DO THAT ALSO.”

  Joel put his glasses on and grinned at her wolfishly. “You might just have cracked it,” he said, glancing at his watch. “C’mon, let’s go home.”

  “WOOOO!” said Fintan.

  “Three hundred!” said Flora as they walked out of the door—Flora blushing, Joel practically pulling her along.

  “And,” she said as they walked down the cobbled road to town, even though he kept trying to smother her with kisses on the way, �
��your boys owe me one by the way. Well, not those exact boys. But even so. Do you think they’d fancy helping me out as wedding staff?”

  “I’m not sure child slavery is as good an idea as your other one about the cards.”

  “Work experience?”

  “I’ll ask Jan.”

  “Ask Charlie.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Saif was surprised to see him there in the waiting room. He was running desperately behind: the children had had to get dressed up for Viking day and Ash had run up and down the stairs brandishing a sword and refusing to answer to any name other than Storm Cutter.

  But he welcomed him in politely.

  Colton sat down and took a deep breath. “I need my medication increased.”

  Saif stared. “I haven’t got your medical notes. I can’t just do these things willy-nilly.”

  Colton made a quick phone call, and the notes appeared on Saif’s computer ten seconds later as if by magic. He sat in silence while Saif read them. The prognosis was very grim indeed. Pancreatic cancer was not one of the sexy high-profile ones that got celebrity campaigns. And Colton was very far along. It was so clear when you looked at him, but what was obviously jaundice had been covered up by Colton’s heavy California tan. He’d had his teeth whitened, wore sunglasses permanently, and absented himself on business. Even so.

  “How are you keeping this from Fintan?”

  “A lot of effort and lying.”

  “I haven’t read much but . . . I mean, there are experimental treatments . . .”

  “None of them worth a dime, Doc. The one thing I do know a bit about is where to put my money. And none of them are worth a nut.”

  Saif frowned.

  “And it says here you’ve turned down chemo?”

  “Chemo is fucking barbaric, man,” said Colton, shaking his head. “I throw up and fall apart and feel like crap so I get an extra three months.”

  “Three to six . . .”

  “Yeah, but that’s the winter anyway . . .”

  Saif blinked at Colton’s dark humor and decided to risk responding to it. “Won’t that feel longer?”

  Colton’s laugh turned into a coughing fit. “Thanks, Doc. It’s nice to talk to someone who gets it. That lawyer of mine completely fell apart.” He leaned forward. “Morphine and whisky,” he said. “That’s how I’m doing this.”