Page 53 of Reckless

I ducked my head to hide my grin. “Yeah.”

“Do you want to stop in for a visit when you’re done?” he asked.

I didn’t know what he meant by a visit and found I didn’t much care. Whether he was going to make me a cup of tea, or whether he had something else in mind, both worked for me. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he repeated and this time let his smile come out like the sun after a storm. “I’ll see you soon.”

I watched him walk away while I petted Gerty on the neck, and she chewed on my hair.

The bells on the door jingled when I lugged the first churn into the shop.

“Was that the doctor I saw you with just now?” Mavis asked from behind the counter, where she sat on her stool like a queen on a throne, surrounded by racks of lollies and gum and chips. Her gaze followed me keenly as I headed for the back. “Well?”

“Surely was.” The cold room offered a moment’s respite before I had to run the gauntlet again to get the next churn.

“And was that the doctor I saw walking with you out of the village before dawn?” she asked.

I escaped outside where Gerty gave me a sympathetic chuff.

“Well, then?” Mavis asked me when I carried the second churn into the shop.

“Seems like,” I said.

When I came back out of the cold room for the second time, she’d moved from behind the counter and was blocking the narrow path to the door. She had her arms folded over her chest. She lifted her chin as I approached. “Aren’t you a dark horse then, Robbie Finch?”

My face heated up, and I did my best not to shrink behind the empty churn I was carrying. “I’m an open book, Mavis.”

She snorted like Gerty and tilted her head as she regarded me with a narrow, assessing stare. “Still, a doctor’s not bad. You could do worse.” She shrugged. “Even if he is an incomer, which I suppose can’t be helped.”

I hummed my agreement, although I wasn’t exactly sure what I was agreeing to.

Mavis headed back for the counter, stomping along in her gumboots. “Let me see if I’ve got enough in the till. Otherwise you’ll have to wait while I go upstairs.”

I nodded and browsed the selection of chocolate bars while Mavis counted out what I was owed for the milk. I wondered if Alastair liked Cherry Ripes.

“He could do worse too, I suppose,” she said at last, sliding a stack of notes across the counter. “He looked after Anna well.” She cleared her throat and swallowed. Then she sniffed and added, “But he’s not all that clever, is he?”

“How do you mean?” I asked, handing one of the notes back and tucking two Cherry Ripes into my pocket.

Mavis sniffed again, and this time it didn’t seem like it was to hide her feelings. No, they were all out in plain sight when she said, archly, “Well, he’s got Button John working for him still, doesn’t he? You mark my words, Robbie, that’ll only end in tears.”

“You’re probably right about that,” I said. “Have a good one, Mavis. See you tomorrow.”

There was a lump in my throat as I led Gerty towards the old mill house, and a strange swirling feeling in my gut as I replayed the conversation with Mavis in my head. Mavis knew about me and Alastair, and the sky hadn’t fallen. Was still hanging right above my head, bright and blue with gulls sailing in it.

I’d told Alastair I didn’t know how to be gay the way I was on Dauntless Island, but maybe he was right. Maybe I was doing it. And the Dauntless Islanders didn’t care about that stuff. Never really had, which wasn’t the whole reason we’d never wanted either the government or the church sticking their noses in. But maybe a thread of it ran through our history, all the way back to the sailors on the HMS Dauntless. A pair of them had lived together and even been buried in the same grave, something Eddie, who ran the museum now, had been very excited to discover. But when you’d mutinied and murdered your captain already, what was one more broken law? Especially one as stupid as that?

So nobody on Dauntless would care that I was gay, and it was nobody’s business exactly what I did with Alastair in his bedroom—or what he did to me. That was between us only.

My throat ached, and I couldn’t even say why, until the thought burst out of me right there in front of the harbour: it wasn’t why my dad had left. At least, it wasn’t the whole reason. It couldn’t be, because nobody cared about Red Joe and Eddie, or about Natty and Dominic. Well, they cared a bit about Natty and Dominic but that was only because Dominic was a copper, not because he was a bloke.

When I was a teenager and I’d found that magazine, I’d felt dirty and thrilled and angry and scared all at the same time, and I’d never tried to pick those tangled knots apart. Just swallowed them down so they lodged deep in my guts then tried to ignore them.

When I was a teenager, I’d seen that magazine and decided my dad had been running from something, but now, as I stood there, the sun soaking into my shoulders and Gerty nibbling at the hair on the nape of my neck, I realised that I couldn’t know that. I couldn’t know, and I’d never know, and I had to find a way to learn to be okay with that, because what I’d been doing so far sure as hell hadn’t been working out for me.

My footsteps quickened as I drew closer to the old mill house; I couldn’t figure out the thoughts in my head, but my body knew where it wanted to be. I unhitched Gerty from the cart when we arrived and led her into Alastair’s garden. Gave her a good scratch on the side of the neck, in the spot that always made her lean hard against me. When I looked up at Alastair’s doorway he was leaning in it, tall and narrow, with a mug of tea in his hands.

“Kettle’s still hot,” he said, and stepped back into the house.