Page 2 of Dirty Rotten Love

MacLeod checks my work. I try not to hold my breath.

“Fine,” he says.

I feel a small burst of something warm in my chest that I am absolutely not going to examine.

We move on to the next point. The wind has picked up and it is cold in the specific miserable way that the North Sea does cold, which is less of a temperature and more of a personal attack. I pull my collar up and say nothing because complaining about the weather on an oil rig is apparently one of the things you just don’t do, Dazza explained this on day one, it marks you out as someone who doesn’t belong here, and I belong here absolutely, I love it here, and I’m not going to mess it up.

“How are you finding it,” says MacLeod.

I look at him. He is looking at the next drain and his face gives nothing away, which is standard, but the fact that he has asked me anything at all that is not a direct instruction is genuinely unprecedented in our five-day acquaintance.

“Love it,” I say, and I mean it so completely that it probably comes out more earnest than intended.

He does look at me then. Briefly.

“It’s your first rotation,” he says.

“Aye.”

“Most people don’t love it on their first rotation.”

I shrug. “I’m not most people.”

It comes out confident because I am confident. Obviously. And also because there is something about the way MacLeod talks to me that makes me want to stand up straighter, which I’m not examining either, I’m just noting it and moving on.

He makes the noise again. The unimpressed one. But there is something fractionally different about it this time and I can’t tell what, and it is going to bother me later, I already know it is.

We finish the inspection in silence that is less uncomfortable than our silences usually are, which might be the nicest thing I can say about MacLeod. In the last five days I have learned that his silences have different qualities, the way the sea has different qualities, and this one is almost, almost neutral.

I’ll take it.

When we get back to the main floor, Tam is there and he raises his eyebrows at me in a question. I give him a tiny nod that means everything is okay, it was fine, stand down. He looks almost disappointed.

MacLeod hands me his clipboard. “Sign off the inspection log.”

I sign it. My handwriting is terrible. It has always been terrible and I have made my peace with this.

MacLeod takes the clipboard back and looks at my signature with an expression I cannot read.

“Gallacher,” he says.

“Boss?”

“Don’t be late for the briefing.”

“I’m never late,” I say, which is a complete lie, I am almost always late, but I have not been late once on this rig because I set three alarms and I will take that secret to my grave.

I also learned, on day one, that Macleod’s version of not late, is being at least five minutes early, and I won’t make that mistake again. Ever. There is absolutely no need for him to bring it up.

MacLeod gives me one last look. Long, dark, unreadable. Then he walks away.

I watch him go for approximately two seconds before I become extremely interested in the middle distance instead, which is a perfectly normal thing to look at.

Tam materializes at my shoulder. “Well?”

“It was a drain inspection,” I say. “We inspected drains.”

“And you survived? He didn’t tear chunks out of you?” Tam’s eyes are wide.