Sleepless Nights by Sarah Bilston Page B

fantasy day. I could almost believe I’d imagined it, except for the sunburn on my shoulders and the fact that the sitting room was rocking beneath my feet for hours.
    Q turned out to be surprisingly amenable to the idea of a trip along the coast followed by a sail (“Don’t know what Samuel will make of it but I’m bored to death of sitting in the dark”), so at eleven a.m. we bundled ourselves into Paul’s huge olive-green SUV, a boat attached to the back, and drove fifteen miles along the coast to a small peninsula. Just as the road seemed set to end in the Atlantic Ocean itself, Paul took a winding, pitted dirt track that led across rocky ground, past clusters of sparse pine trees, to a set of stone gateposts; at the end of a short driveway a huge modern house reared up against the rock, with vast glass windows overlooking the ocean. Adjile (made millions in his dot-com start-up, retired at twenty-nine) greeted us at the front of the house, dressed in oil-stained clothes with a very charming smudge on his nose and fabulous manners. Mrs. Adjile(her name’s actually Lily) emerged after a few minutes dressed in similarly stained shorts and a tight ruby-colored tank-top. “I’ll get onto Ricky about ordering new spinlocks,” she told Adjile briefly, before reaching up to give Paul a big hug. As she turned to us with a warm smile, I discovered with a sense of shock that she had gold eyes—literally, gold eyes, set beneath high-arched brows. Other than that she was quite normal-looking—tanned skin, muscly legs, narrow shoulders, and a wide chin—but still, gold eyes! Paul, Tom, and Adjile vanished off to attend to Paul’s boat while Lily offered us lunch on a long, hot cedar deck strung across the rocks. We watched the green waves bubbling beneath us while slurping seafood with wholegrain bread and fresh white butter served on ice. Tom and his friends reappeared after an hour or so with the satisfied air of men who have wrestled with machinery and won.
    I’m a practical English girl, but I was in serious danger of losing my head. If only Una could see me now, I thought, as I flicked out my white damask napkin and sipped at my flute of sparkling rose-colored wine.
    After lunch, Adjile and Lily took us down a steep rocky path, then across the beach to their dock, a long wooden walkway with eight boats bobbing gracefully beside. The air was filled with the noise of their creaking and flexing as the water flopped lazily against the barnacled posts of the dock. The boats were a range of sizes and shapes, and Tom and Paul spent a few minutes exclaiming excitedly over Adjile’s new purchase, a “Tornado catamaran” (which looked nothing like a boat to me, but still). Adjile, Lily, and Paul had a quick discussion about which “craft” Paul should take, finally settling on something called a Flying Dutchman. I was pleased because it was, in my opinion, by far the prettiest, a picture postcard of a sailing boat with a gleaming mahogany deck and bottom and a long, attenuated prow. Adjile unlooped the boat’s mooring rope from around a big cotton reel affair while Paul rummaged about in a wooden cheston the dock for life vests. “Who’s coming first?” he asked, when he finally emerged, laden with fluorescent padding.
    Tom grinned, bursting with childlike pleasure, and raised his arm. “Me, me, pick me!”
    Paul laughed. “Okay, of course you’ll come, Tom, but I can take one more—”
    “Go, Q, go,” I said, smiling, “I’ll take Samuel,” and I pushed her gently toward the boat. She looked back at me. “If you’re sure…” she said, with a tiny show of reluctance. “Of course I am,” I replied briskly, removing the wriggling bundle from her arms. “Samuel will be fine with me. Have a wonderful time!”
    It seemed suddenly perfect, this golden day in the golden light of the hot wooden dock, my tummy full of pink wine and fresh bread and salty fish. Samuel blinked and lifted his head unsteadily as I