The Angels' Share Read online

  I flicked the tip of my clitoris and imagined that it was one of the exhibitionist couple eating me up. I didn’t care which. My fantasies were often filled with other women, usually present to help my masculine character get the most from me. The pretty women I concocted were expendable fancies, usually frighteningly attractive and perfect, and while they were seemingly innocent and naïve on the outside, when it came to pleasuring my body they were naughty vixens. Another secret fantasy: making love to a woman. It was all in my journal, with which I would cuddle up later.

  When I saw the pounding slow, when I saw the woman lay her head on her man’s shoulder and gradually slide off his spent body, I put down the binoculars and probed myself while rubbing my clitoris until my sex tightened around my fingers. The shivers of an extended, overdue orgasm worked up my spine, across my shoulders, into my neck and mind and back down again into my toes. I flopped in the chair and laughed as I remembered that I was still wearing my walking boots, having simply unfastened my jeans.

  I put the binoculars to my eyes again and located the cottage window. A dim glow emanated from behind closed curtains. Funny, I thought, to shut out the world after the act. It made me wonder: did they know I was watching? I could only hope that they would perform again soon.

  * * *

  I layered myself in sweaters and jackets, having been kept warm previously by my steamy observations. My body hummed from near-perfectly satisfied thrills, my lucky discovery of the cliff top couple having sated my need for a man. My fingers alone would have never sufficed.

  I relit the candles and began to arrange the cottage to suit my needs. I peeked into the back room and recoiled, fastening the door behind me. Birds and other wildlife had been in residence, entering through the broken window, and the room would need a massive clearout before it was vaguely habitable. For now, I would have to sleep on the two armchairs pushed together. At least, if I got it going, I would be near the fire.

  I searched at the side of the cottage by torchlight, where I recalled my father storing driftwood and logs he had dragged from the cliff top. Sure enough, as if no one had cranked up the stove since my childhood adventures, I found a pile of dry wood in a ramshackle shed attached to the cottage. Back inside, I cleared out the fireplace as best I could in the half-light. I sneezed a couple of times as ancient dust and soot wafted into the air. To test the draw, I balled a piece of old newspaper lying on the table and lit it in the grate. After an initial surge of grey-white backdraught into the cottage, the chimney sucked up the smoke beautifully. With the skill of a Girl Guide I arranged knots of newspaper, kindling and some of the driftwood before setting light to the lot. Within minutes, I was sipping again from my emergency brandy flask and warming my toes by a blazing fire.

  ‘Nothing quite like it,’ I said, referring to the open fire although wondering if perhaps I was conjuring an imaginary friend. Had the loneliness of my predicament got to me already? Having become a voyeur, was I now inventing company? I laughed and shook my head in despair.

  A month ago, running away from my home without telling a soul where I was headed would have seemed a fleeting insanity. Setting out on the trail of my fortune was as likely as setting foot on Mars. But it was true. I was hiding out in a little beach cottage, preparing to launch an intelligence operation and attack on the man who had stolen my family home. I admit, it was upside-down fun: being secreted in a far corner of Creg-ny-Varn, concealed by a veil of sea mist and a heavy determination to regain what was rightfully mine, stirred something primal within me. I may have been leading a simple life for the last fourteen years, some of my closest friends having dropped out of the rat-race and become passionate about all things home-grown, but I wasn’t a fool. I knew about business from my father and my four university years in Granada had given me a cosmopolitan outlook. Whoever had stolen my inheritance was in for a shock.

  * * *

  I pulled my tightly stuffed sleeping bag out of its sack and puffed it up for maximum warmth. Despite the crackling fire, I could still see my breath condensing as I exhaled. It would be another few hours before the cottage finally warmed up after years of abandonment. Strangely, as the fire pumped out heat, I felt the walls reach out and hug me, as if the house was pleased I had come to its rescue. Depending on how long my mission took, I planned to make the place more homely. Not only would it be practical, making my transition into such a contrasting climate more bearable, but I wanted to do it in my father’s memory. I truly believed he would be shocked if he saw the sorry state of the beach house.

  I pulled my backpack close to the armchairs and climbed into my sleeping bag. Once snuggled inside, I dared to remove my jeans and outer coat but refused to cast aside my sweaters and socks. I rummaged around inside my pack and drew out a rather crumpled bag of tortilla chips, a squashed packet of sandwiches and a bottle of water. I began to stuff my face when it occurred to me that I should write down the luscious sex I had just had with myself thanks to my cliff top neighbours. Had it not been so perilously cold in the cottage, I would have clambered off my makeshift bed for another peek, just to see if they were offering another performance.

  I searched the main compartment of my pack but couldn’t locate my pocket-book. Puzzled, I concluded that I must have stashed it in one of the outer pouches but no, it wasn’t there either. Sitting upright, I emptied the entire contents of my luggage onto my legs and rifled through it desperately.

  ‘I know it’s here. I put it away on the ferry!’ Memory flashes of stuffing the book deep in my pack and securing the straps were followed by a cold sweat and prickles of fear as I realised that my most private possession – probably the most private possession of anyone in the entire world – was either lost or, worse still, stolen.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ I wailed. I dragged my fingers down my face. Aside from the year of work that had gone into this particular volume, I’d been looking forward to writing up my temporary ferry-mate’s antics in Paris. The thought of the ferry company’s staff finding my innermost thoughts and reading them to each other at fag break sent me into a panic. I leapt out of the armchair bed and hopped about the cottage searching for my journal. ‘Think, woman, think. You came down the beach, left your bag outside, humped it inside, put it over there…’ I briefly fumbled about outside in the dark, near the wall where I had initially dumped my bag. Nothing. I trawled the inside again, even the bird-infested bedroom, but nothing. I could only hope that daylight would render my diary visible, where candlelight had been insufficient.

  I was about to climb back into bed, my search terminated by freezing limbs, when I stopped in my tracks and began to shake my head. Only little ripples of realisation at first but soon my dark hair was tossing wildly from side to side as I began to groan and wail as the truth hit me.

  ‘No, no, it can’t be. The evil witch!’ I threw back my head.

  I remember thinking a few hours earlier: I know my backpack is heavy and awkward but how can it take anyone so long to adjust my straps?

  ‘The little thief! Steph hadn’t been helping me at all. She was raiding my pack!’ I groaned again. With the deftness of a magician, she must have palmed that book as quickly as any four of hearts. ‘Damn her!’ I yelled, pacing about and pulling my hair. My only consolation was that I knew she was still on the island. I would just have to find her before she learnt too much about me.

  Back in bed, lulled into a fitful sleep by waves that sounded so close I thought they would appear under the front door, I gradually began to warm up as the fire crackled and spat. My eyes kept dropping shut but then I’d jump awake as a particularly loud wave pounded the rocks on the beach. I’d blown out the candles so the only light was from the stove. Crazy images patchworked together behind my eyelids – the colourful life I had left behind, my epic journey from Spain and arrival on the island, the ferry, the crashing waves, seasick passengers, my pocket-book, Steph, panic, the rocks, the subterfuge, my inheritance, binoculars, the couple on the cliff, the figure
that passed across the window just as my eyes dropped shut…

  When sleep finally came, only two things were certain: I had to find Steph and I needed to know who had taken ownership of Creg-ny-Varn.

  2

  I woke to the same sound that lulled me into sleep. A shaft of sunlight passed across my face, warming my skin but making my eyes screw up into slits. The first thing I did was reach between my legs and feel a moist residue from the night before. I grinned, rolled onto my side and drew a finger up and down the slippery line between my lips. The images of the previous night’s display were still fresh in my mind and it occurred to me how lucky I was to have such considerate neighbours. I giggled at the thought and caught sight of the binoculars still on the window sill. The white early-morning sun proved just how much of a mess the place was. But I didn’t care, not yet anyway. Housework could wait and at least there was still a fire in the stove.

  I grinned and struggled within the sleeping bag to remove my knickers. I needed a couple of quick orgasms to set me up for everything I had to do that day. It felt as if my pussy had been swollen all night, judging by…

  I froze.

  Someone was outside the cottage, crunching the pebbles in my barnacle-covered front garden. A dog, too – I heard yapping and the creature being called to heel. I unzipped the sleeping bag and, in a panic, searched for my knickers that were buried somewhere at the bottom of the feather-filled sack.

  ‘Christ, where are they?’ I gave up and cowered on the armchairs, trying to quickly assess my situation, the reality of which had ebbed and flowed several times a day since leaving Spain, like the salt-tide washing the rocks outside the cottage. Since my departure, I had felt free and trapped, frightened and fearless, cowardly and brave. My emotions were a confused surge, leaving me unable to discern the difference between what I wanted and how to get it.

  In spite of my turmoil, I realised that if I was discovered so soon in my mission, I would be truly washed up. Word would travel around the island within hours that the Callister girl had returned, alerting the enemy. I had to get rid of whoever was outside my hideaway or lie low until they went.

  I crawled to the window on all fours and slowly raised my eyes above sill level. Through the grime, I saw a man in a long jacket standing on the tallest rock in my front garden, staring out to sea with apparently no purpose other than to stare at the pale blue-grey horizon of another Manx morning. His dog, a scrawny terrier, jumped from rock to rock, sometimes slipping but quickly regaining its foothold. I never expected to see anyone down on this small, inhospitable beach, especially at this time of year.

  The man turned to face the cottage and I ducked, but too slowly. He must have seen me, even through the muck and salt on the window. I waited, hardly daring to breathe. Apart from the regular small crash of waves dumping seaweed and driftwood onto the shore, there was nothing to hear. I trembled beneath the window, hugging my sweatshirt around my knees.

  Then there came a sudden and urgent series of knocks on the door.

  ‘Hello?’ He called through the salt-bleached timber. I visualised his lips pressed close.

  ‘Damn you, go away,’ I hissed.

  I glanced at the stove. Flames still licked at the giant log I put in during the night so that I’d have warmth in the morning.

  ‘The smoke,’ I whispered pitifully, realising that he would notice the grey-black curls from where he stood on the creaky front deck. I cradled my head in my hands.

  ‘Anyone home?’ He knew there was.

  I had no choice. Which looked more suspicious – a disused cottage where a figure was seen lunging out of sight and a fire is lit but no one answers the door, or a disused cottage being given a new lease of life by…I thought frantically…by someone plausible?

  I stood up, feathered my fingers through my straggly, sleep-mashed hair, breathed in deeply and opened the door. I forced a grin that told him I’d lived there all my life.

  ‘Morning!’ I said, as if I was expecting him for breakfast. Then I stopped abruptly, my mouth hanging open stupidly and my feet glued to the floor. He was the man from the cliff top cottage and was just as sexy, just as alluring at close range with his clothes on as he had been last night.

  ‘Hi,’ he replied in a drawn-out, already suspicious voice. His eyes were everywhere at once, flicking up and down my semi-dressed body and then into the dark cottage behind me. ‘So there is someone here.’ He called the terrier to heel. ‘Welcome to Niarbyl,’ he said, evidently very curious.

  ‘Well,’ thanks,’ I said, desperately trying to reani-mate myself. If I acted defensively he was far more likely to suspect something was up than if I behaved like someone with a right to be there. ‘Would you like to come in?’ Instantly kicking myself for the invitation, I stepped aside and beckoned him in. I glanced longingly out to sea as if it was a possible escape route.

  The man, as rugged as the rocks on the beach, attached a lead to the dog’s collar and stepped inside, ducking his head under the perilously low lintel. ‘What brings you here?’ he asked.

  Suddenly remembering my state of undress, I turned around helplessly a couple of times, as his dog might do before it lay down to sleep, and rummaged around the armchairs in search of clothing.

  ‘Are these what you’re looking for?’ He bent down and picked up a pair of my knickers from underneath an armchair.

  My head thumped with a sudden rush of embarrassment before I iced over and turned into a glacier. I wanted to hurl myself at his hand, make a grab for what he had plucked off the floor, yank the flimsy lace from his grasp, but all I could do was stand and stare at him while he offered me my panties.

  ‘My knickers,’ I finally said in a voice as brittle as meringue. Before I could say anything else, he was sitting down on the makeshift bed and once again staring around the cottage. I reached out and took my underwear and also retrieved my jeans before silently retreating to the animal-infested back room. ‘Won’t be a minute,’ I called out as if trying on a new outfit in a boutique. I hopped and staggered in the dimly lit room while forcing my legs into the denim. I returned still wearing a pink flush on my cheekbones but also a smile that assured him this was nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘I hadn’t expected visitors at this hour of the day,’ I said.

  The man patted the dog’s tan and white rump as it skittered around his ankles. He leaned forward, his eyes wandering around the cottage as if he was on a reconnaissance mission. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ he said. ‘It’s just that there hasn’t been anyone here for such a long time and I wanted to make sure things were…you know…’ – he trailed off and stared directly at me – ‘…OK.’

  ‘I understand.’ I stood primly before him, trying to suppress a laugh as the dog spun in circles.

  ‘Lewis,’ he replied and stood up briefly, extending a hand.

  I took it and said, surprisingly easily, ‘Ailey.’ There was no way I was revealing my surname.

  ‘Nog.’ He gestured to the silly creature and grinned, his teeth too white for a man with stubble, a dirty parka and worn-out boots. ‘The dog.’

  ‘Nog the dog,’ I repeated because there wasn’t much else to say.

  ‘Are you on holiday?’ I could tell that his question was laced with hidden meaning. What are you doing here? was what he meant to say.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Not the best time of year to be exploring the island.’ Nog finally became still and sat between Lewis’s legs.

  ‘The scenery’s dramatic,’ I said. ‘How I like it.’

  ‘Been here long?’

  ‘Just got here actually. It’s my uncle’s cottage.’ No response. ‘Great-uncle?’ I added for no particular reason, except perhaps to confuse him.

  Lewis stared at me, his experienced eyes scanning my body, trying to assess if what he saw concurred with what I was saying. They were pale-grey eyes soaked in something dangerous, marinated in years of salty island living that had given him a weathered look and made
him appear older than he probably was. My best guess was forty-two. It was at that point that I realised his undeniable attractiveness, despite our age gap.

  ‘So you’re a relation of Ethan Kinrade’s.’ It was a statement rather than a question although his intonation did slow considerably on ‘Kinrade’.

  I closed my eyes and tried to swim because I was fast sinking below the surface. I needed to be vague. Getting Lewis and his silly dog out of my cottage was a priority but I found myself engaging him – or was it him engaging me? – in an exchange of information about my great-uncle Ethan. Whoever he was.

  ‘He seems very young to have a great-niece.’

  ‘Oh yes, he is, isn’t he?’ It was agonising. ‘But here I am!’ I held out my hands in a kind of personal fanfare and twisted my legs awkwardly. My shuffling feet did something to Nog, however, and the dog leapt at the over-sized socks that had dropped to my ankles. Although painful, the distraction was welcome.

  ‘Nog, leave!’ Lewis finally persuaded the terrier that my socks weren’t black rabbits. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a clean, unsuitable grin, his eyes lingering on my breasts. ‘You were saying, about Ethan.’

  ‘I was?’

  Think, woman, think. Lewis waited patiently for my response. His black jeans stretched across his thighs and his parka falling open to reveal a grey, oil-stained sweatshirt. A large, veined hand with surprisingly neat nails rubbed at the stubble on his chin while he sized me up, waiting for my reply.

  ‘There’s nothing to say really. I haven’t seen him in years. We have this’ – I thought frantically – ‘…arrangement. I’m allowed to use the cottage when I visit.’

  ‘So, you stay here,’ Lewis asked, gesturing around the dilapidated room, ‘and not in Creg-ny-Varn Manor?’

  ‘I like the tranquillity,’ I said, surprising myself. I was beginning to believe my own story. ‘Being so close to the sea, nature, the elements – I love it.’ I held my breath, waiting for him to accept my lies.